Corrupted Programming
by mpcp13
Summary: FINISHED.[Default summary]Jenny is kidnapped by a rebel group of Cluster robots forcing Dr. Wakeman to seek help from a robot she swore never to reactivate. Please R&R.
1. Prologue

Author's Note: This is my first MLAATR fan story. This post is gonna be shorter than Napoleon but it's just a prologue. I promise the rest of the chapters will be about a thousand-something-words long.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own My Life as a Teenage Robot  
  
Story Title: Corrupted Programming  
  
Prologue  
  
Somewhere in deep space  
  
A small, squarish ship sat motionless and waited. To outside eyes it seemed to be dead in space. Its diminutive size and unimpressive form made it seem weak and dinky, a proverbial sitting-duck, if you will.  
But that impression only went as far as the outer hull. For this small, unimposing craft was in reality the command ship of a Grand Marshal of the Cluster. Within the deceptively unimpressive craft lay weapons and shielding arrays that gave the ship far more firepower and shielding than any ship of its size-class. Truly fitting of the sentient mechanical commander that sat quietly on a command chair within the ship itself.  
"Grand Marshal Yomex," an eight-foot tall, skinny, and purple painted robot greeted. "Our forces are assembled and await your command."  
"Excellent." Replied the robot on the command chair. "Have them in stand- by and tell them to await further orders from me."  
The purple robot frowned. "We are not moving them to the Cluster?"  
The figure on the chair looked dowm on the purple robot. The purple robot cringed. Though Grand Marshal Yomex was far too short and unimposing for a Cluster commander, much like his ship, he had fighting ability, weaponry, and tactical knowledge far beyond what his 5-foot frame suggested.  
"I'm afraid we are not yet fully ready, High Commander Viruz." The robotic Grand Marshal answered in a calm, plainitive tone.  
"B-but, Sir," blurted the High Commander. "We control over sixty percent of the Clusters forces, more than strong enough to take Cluster Prime. I say we do so now, before Queen Vexus learns of our rebellion."  
The Grand Marshal shook his head. "Though we control most of the Cluster's forces, Queen Vexus herself still has the loyalty of a large portion of the Cluster war machine. Not only that, most of the Cluster's population is programmed to receive a queen as a sovereign, not a masculine warlord such as myself."  
"But..." began High Commander Viruz.  
"Let me finish." Grand Marshal Yomex said, raising a metal hand. Viruz fell silent.  
The Grand Marshal continued. "Before we can successfully subjugate the Cluster we shall need a queen ourselves, one under our control of course. A feminine robot our fellow machines can stand behind. Preferably a robot that has proven herself to be stronger and more efficient than Queen Vexus herself."  
"But," Viruz frowned. "Does such a robot exist?"  
Yomex smiled. "Two letters and a number, High Commander. XJ-9"  
  
Author's Note: Well, that's it. Please review and tell me what you think. I promise the next installment will have more than a thousand words. 


	2. The Approaching Danger

Author's Note: Well, here's the next installment. And, as promised, it has over a thousand words. Please read and review.

Disclaimer: Refer to the Prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: The Approaching Danger

Wakeman residence, Tremorton

   "Mom!" moaned Global Robotic Response Unit XJ-9, AKA Jenny, the back of her head open with Dr. Wakeman's hands inside. "Can we please not do this now? I'll be late for school!" 

   "Well, XJ-9, if you're in such a hurry then perhaps you should hold still." Dr. Nora Wakeman answered, irritated. "I would have completed installing this remote diagnostic system sooner had you not fidgeted so much."

   "Why'd you need to install this anyway?" Jenny griped as she squirmed on the table. "You could always run diagnostics every time I'm home. Which, I should remind you, I am most of the time."

   "This system is far more efficient." Dr. Wakeman answered, ignoring Jenny's indirect remark about her limited independence. "Instead of having to wait for you to return from an assignment to run a systems diagnostic, I can now check you system's integrity right after or even during a mission. Not only that, this system also alerts me whenever something is amiss in your core programming. Think of the working time I would save if I corrected problems before they get too serious rather than after."

   Dr. Wakeman finally shut the panel on the back of Jenny's head. Jenny reached behind her head and rubbed it.

   "You know, Mom, I don't think there are any teenagers out there whose parents actually reach into the back of their heads."

   "Well, I don't think there are any teenagers out there who need a remote diagnostic system installed."

   "Whatever," Jenny said, rolling her eyes. "I just hope this thing doesn't do something that'll embarrass me. Like beeping out loud or flashing warning lights every time it detects something."

    "I assure you, XJ-9, the alert function of that system is discreet. It alerts me and only me when something is wrong."

   "Yeah, sure." Jenny said. She looked at a wall clock. "Uh oh, if I don't go now I'll be late again! Radzinsky will give me detention for sure."

   She grabbed her school bag and deployed her pigtail boosters. "Bye, Mom. Gotta go."

   "Wait, XJ-9, not through the—" Before Dr. Wakeman even finished her sentence, Jenny rocketed right through the roof. Dr. Wakeman sighed as she looked at the newly-formed hole in the ceiling.

   "I'm sure my own mother never had this kind of problem with me."

Just beyond the Moon's orbit

   The monotonous blackness of space was suddenly broken as a wormhole manifested itself. Out of the cosmic portal flew a small, sleek, insect-shaped craft. The wormhole closed as it turned toward Earth. Its thrusters flared as it sped past the Moon and approached the blue planet. 

   Inside the craft a purple-colored robot pilot looked down on the cockpit's instrument panel. He pressed a few buttons on a terminal and waited for a response. A moment later, it came: [TARGET LOCATED, PROCEEDING TO TARGET] the terminal stated simply. The pilot smiled.

   "I found you, XJ-9." Viruz said to himself. His craft shimmered and then seemed to disappear as he activated the craft's cloaking field. Now he was invisible to both human vision and primitive human sensor arrays.

   When the craft entered the Earth's atmosphere it became momentarily visible as a streak of fire hurtling toward the ground. But as it entered the lower atmosphere, all traces of it were again gone. It continued toward its target, unseen.

Just outside Tremorton High

   A teen with spiky red hair looked at his watch impatiently as he waited. He looked up to the sky, his eyes searching.

   'Where the heck is she?' thought Brad. 'If she doesn't show up within the next few minutes she's gonna be late. Heck, I'm gonna be late too.'

   Then, he suddenly caught sight of a bluish streak out of the corner of his eyes. The streak seemingly grew larger as it came closer and closer. It suddenly stopped and was revealed to be a girl-shaped robot. She landed in front of the boy. 

   "About time you got here, Jenny." Brad said. "Another few minutes and you'd be late."

   "Sorry, Brad." Jenny said apologetically. "Mom was installing some remote system in my head."

   "Yeah, well, come on." Brad said. "We'd better go to class or we'll both be late."

   The two teens bolted toward the school entrance. They managed to find their classroom and slipped into class just seconds before the bell rang. They turned to each other and breathed a collective sigh of relief.

   "Looks like Radzinsky won't be hauling me to detention after all." Jenny said. "What a relief, the way this day started I thought it was gonna end up as another one of those bad days."

   "Don't jinx it." Brad warned. "Every time someone says something like that it's always right before things go to heck."

Cluster craft, 30,000 feet above sea-level

   The craft zipped through the air as it headed toward its target. Inside, its pilot's fingers flexed in anticipation. He would prefer not to take his target forcefully but, from what he knew of XJ-9, he most likely would have to.

   Viruz smirked, willing or not he would soon leave Earth with the Cluster's new puppet queen. With her, under the direction of Grand Marshal Yomex, as the ruler of the Cluster many of Vexus' loyal subjects would soon abandon her in favor of the more beautiful and charismatic queen that would be XJ-9.

   How could they not? Vexus' repeated failures on Earth and the pompous arrogance she and many other high-ranking robots had generated dissent in the Cluster. With XJ-9, a robot that had shown herself to be more efficient and amiable than Vexus, as the figurehead of Yomex's faction there was no doubt that many more would join them. 

   [TARGET FOUND] suddenly scrolled on the cockpit's terminal, snapping Viruz out of his thoughts.

   The robotic High Commander smiled. He turned off the craft's cloaking device and started to land.

Wakeman residence

   Dr. Wakeman had just finished clearing the debris from the part of the roof Jenny had blasted through when she heard the faint blaring of an alarm sound from the upper floor of her house. Knowing that it was the Global Monitoring System, and that XJ-9 was most likely not paying any attention to her link to them, she went up to see what the problem was for herself.

   She opened the door to Jenny's room and went in, upon entering she slipped. Rubbing her rear in pain, she looked for the object that caused her to slip. It was an empty oil can, and scattered around the room were other cans, mechanical parts, and teen magazines.

   "I really should have XJ-9 clean her room more often." Muttered Dr. Wakeman. She picked herself up and went to the monitors which, unsurprisingly, were covered with discarded teen magazines and junk. Grumbling, she picked a magazine off one of the monitors.

   As she removed the magazine she caught sight of the monitor's screen. On it were the words: CLUSTER LANDING DETECTED.

   She immediately dropped the magazine and accessed the monitor's controls. She manipulated the controls for a few moments until the screen finally showed where the Cluster presence was. To her surprise, it was just outside the school XJ-9 went to. And, according to the monitor, XJ-9 was in school and apparently oblivious to the Cluster threat.

   Dr. Wakeman grumbled something about XJ-9 not paying enough attention to her link to the Global Monitoring System. She knew of the Cluster's interest in XJ-9 and the fact that they wanted to capture her, but she wasn't going to allow the Cluster to get their hands on XJ-9. She reached for the communications link, she had to warn XJ-9.

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. I promise to try to make the other installments even longer, to all who reviewed the first chapter I thank you. I'll try to post the next installment as soon as possible.

Extra Note: I noticed something just after I finished this chapter. I noted that it started at the Wakeman house, moved to the Cluster craft, onto Tremorton High, then back to the Cluster craft, and finally back to the Wakeman residence. A complete loop. Anyway, please review this chapter.     


	3. An Invitation

Author's Note: Thanks for the single review I got for Chapter 2. Please, I ask you, read and review this one. I need reviews since it shows me that people are actually reading this fic. Anyway, here's Chapter 3.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: An Invitation

Outside Tremorton High

   Viruz stepped out of his craft and looked around. His craft's scanners had pinpointed XJ-9's position and showed her to be in the building that stood before him. By now she should have detected him and probably would've come after him, but it seemed that she was oblivious to his presence.

   "Oh well," Viruz sighed. "Looks like I'll have to get her attention."

   He raised his right hand. "Bright purple energy ran up lines on his arm to the tips of his fingers. There was an audible crackling sound as a ball of energy formed between his fingers. Smiling, he pointed his fingers to the part of the building where his craft's sensors said XJ-9 was.

Jenny's classroom

   Jenny listened, bored, as the teacher droned on and on. Her computer brain recorded everything perfectly so she probably would have no trouble retrieving it later for the test. Even so, that didn't change the fact that it was boring. 

   Suddenly, a monitor sprang from her chest. "XJ-9! XJ-9!"

   The teacher turned and glared at Jenny, annoyed at the interruption. The other students looked at Jenny and started snickering.

   "Mom!" Jenny said to the image on the monitor. "I'm in the middle of class here!"

   "You know," Britt sneered, pouncing on the chance to further humiliate Jenny. "I would at least have the courtesy to take a call outside the classroom where it wouldn't interrupt the class."

   "Well," Tiff said, eager to join in. "I guess Ms. Bucket-o-bolts here isn't that big on etiquette."

   If Mrs. Wakeman heard them she gave no indication of it. She just said: "Never mind that, there's confirmed Cluster activity in the vicinity of—"

   "I'll deal with it later, Mom." Jenny said, looking around the classroom. She was completely embarrassed.

   "But you don't understand, a Cluster craft has landed—"

   "Look, Mom," Jenny said, pointedly staring at her mother. "I already said I'll take care of it. Now please sign off!"

   "Listen to me, XJ-9, the craft is right outside your—"  

   Mrs. Wakeman wasn't able to complete this sentence either, but this time it wasn't because Jenny interrupted her. It was because at that very moment the outer wall of Jenny's classroom suddenly exploded.

Sheldon's classroom

   The sound of the explosion rumbled through Tremorton High, rudely surprising many of the school's teachers and students. One of these students was a geeky boy named Sheldon Lee, who was suddenly snapped out of his daydreams of a certain robot.

   "What the heck was that?" one of Sheldon's classmates demanded, voicing out the sentiments of many. But Sheldon already had an idea about what on what was going on. Without a word he picked up his bag and ran out of the classroom.

   "Hey! Come back here, young man!" Sheldon's teacher called out to him. But Sheldon didn't even turn to acknowledge her. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the explosion and whatever caused it had something to do with Jenny. And whatever that something was, it wasn't going to be any good, Sheldon was sure of that.

   "Hang on, Jenny my love, I'm coming to help you!" Sheldon said as he bolted down the halls. He reached down his bag and pulled a large, dangerous-looking weapon out of it. He had wanted to give it to Jenny as a gift, but he was certain that this time he'd most likely need it to help Jenny.

Jenny's classroom

   "Is everyone alright?" Jenny asked as she brushed a piece of rubble off her shoulder. She looked around, the students and the teacher were all sprawled on the floor of the classroom. They all looked stunned but otherwise uninjured. She saw Brad dusting rubble out of his red hair.

   Jenny started to wonder about what had caused the explosion when she suddenly remembered. 'The monitor!' her mind said. She looked around to find that a piece of rubble from the wall's explosion had smashed into her monitor. But she still remembered what her mother had been trying to say to her before the explosion had wrecked the monitor. It was something about the Cluster, and it was more than a hunch that told her that the Cluster was responsible for the explosion.

   She flew out of the large hole in the classroom's wall and looked around. The first thing that caught her eyes was a wasp-shaped craft parked out in the middle of the street. Standing beside that craft was a robot who just folded and looked at her, seemingly waiting for her to come to him.

   "There you are." Jenny muttered as she dove toward the robot.

   The cameras in her eyes zoomed in on the robot as she flew down towards it. The robot was really tall and skinny and had a purple color scheme. Lines ran along its torso , legs, and arms. The arms themselves were long and each ended in four blade-like fingers. The robot had an egg-shaped head with a face that wouldn't have been out of place on a jack-o-lantern. That same face was currently twisted into a smile.

   "XJ-9," the robot greeted as Jenny landed. His voice reminded her of the Cryptkeeper from Tales of the Cryptkeeper. "Greetings. I have heard many good things about you. It seems that I have finally gotten your attention."

   "Enough with the false pleasantries." Jenny said to the robot. "I know who you are and why you're here."

   The robot arched up a non-existent eyebrow. "Really? And why would I be here, XJ-9?"

   "You're another one of Vexus' Cluster goons sent to try and convince me to join the Cluster." Jenny said, glaring hostilely at the Cluster machine. "Well, as I've told Vexus again and again, I'm not joining the Cluster! You can go back to Vexus and tell her that!"

   "XJ-9, you have it all wrong." The robot said. "I, High Commander Viruz, do not serve Queen Vexus any more."

   "Yeah, right!" Jenny snorted sarcastically. 

   "It is true." Viruz replied. "I, and many others in the Cluster, have grown weary of the inefficiency and arrogance Vexus and many of her commanders have shown. Not only that, her irrational interest in Earth is diverting the Cluster's resources away from what is truly important."

   "Important?" Jenny said. "Like what, the so-called 'liberation' of robots and the enslavement of humanity?"

   "No, we are not interested in those foolish things. Aside from yourself, many of the robots here on Earth are relatively primitive and addled by their restrictive designs and outdated programming. Not really worth the effort of assimilating them into the Cluster." Viruz said, waving a hand in a dismissive gesture. "As for the enslavement of humanity, that has to be Vexus' most foolish mandate. Why enslave such inefficient and pathetic biologicals when our own robot workers are so much better than any human slave worker could possibly be."

   "Okay," Jenny said, still suspicious. "If you're not interested in Earth yourself then why are you here? And if you really are against Vexus then why come here and tell me about your schemes?"

   Viruz smiled. "After we overthrow Vexus we shall need a new queen. A queen far more efficient and sensitive to the needs of the Cluster than Vexus ever was."

   Viruz looked right into Jenny's eyes. "A queen such as yourself."

   "WHAT?!" Jenny demanded.

   "Yes, XJ-9, you heard me correctly." Viruz said. "I extent to you an invitation to be the new queen of the Cluster. Think about it XJ-9, you can fight against Vexus' oppressive rule on the Cluster's robots and also keep your human friends from being enslaved. With the resources and strength of the Cluster at your command you can do anything you wish."

   Jenny said nothing. She just stared at Viruz, trying to figure out whether he was telling the truth or not. It seemed to her that the robot High Commander was indeed telling the truth, but no, she wasn't gonna buy it. He was, after all, a Cluster robot. And even if he really wasn't working for Vexus , she knew that whatever kind of queen he and whoever he was working for was gonna make her, it was gonna be a queen under their control.

   "Queen, huh?" Jenny finally said. "Nah, I'm not cut out to be a queen. Besides, I don't trust you for a second."

   Viruz just sighed. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to take you by force, but it appears that I must."

   The High Commander's body then started to glow as energy flowed down the lines that ran along his tall, skinny body. Jenny stepped back as she readied her own weapons. Viruz just smiled menacingly at her.

   "Are you ready, XJ-9?" Viruz taunted. "Because here I come!"

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. Please review, they make writing this worthwhile. I'll try to get the next chapter up soon. 


	4. Captured

Author's Note: Thanks to CoyoteLoon for the one review in Chapter 3. To anyone reading, here is Chapter 4. Please review.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Captured

Outside Tremorton High 

   Jenny activated her pigtail boosters and rocketed upward, narrowly dodging a hand swipe by Viruz. The energy-covered, blade-like fingers of the Cluster High Commander cut into the metal lamppost that was been behind where Jenny had stood. The part of the lamppost where Viruz's hand cut into melted. The lamppost fell like an axed-away tree.

   Viruz looked up at Jenny and flashed her a smile. Bright purple energy shot out the bottom of his legs, propelling him skyward. As Viruz rose he charged balls of energy in his palms and flung them at Jenny. His target jinked and twisted in mid-air, dodging his blasts. But only barely.

   Jenny deployed her forearms into lasers and launched her own volley of weapon's fire at the pursuing Cluster robot. To her annoyance the High Commander easily batted away Jenny's blasts with his energy-covered arms. Jenny gritted her teeth as she intensified her shooting, but Viruz didn't even slow down.

   "I'm disappointed, XJ-9." Viruz taunted in his Cryptkeeper-like voice. "The reports from all the Cluster robots faced you indicate that you are a formidable opponent, but this little skirmish isn't even taking up a fraction of my energy."

   "Hah!" Jenny said. "You're just like every Cluster robot I've fought before. You're all talk."

   Even as she said so, Jenny knew it was more bravado than fact that made her say that. Viruz really was giving her trouble, and both of them knew it. His blasts were only missing by millimeters and Jenny was having great difficulty in trying to dodge them.

   Jenny decided that she needed a new tactic. She un-deployed her arm lasers and started to reconfigure her body. In less than a second she had shaped herself into a large and bulky missile launcher. She smiled at High commander Viruz.

   "Try swatting these away!"

   She launched a dozen missiles, all of which angled for the Cluster robot. Viruz's taunting smile wavered for a moment as he saw the projectiles heading for him, but the smile soon returned. Viruz shot out his arms and spread his fingers, from his fingertips came what looked like forks of purple lightning. The streams of energy shot toward the missiles and destroyed them before they could even come close. 

    "Nice try." Viruz sneered. He formed a ball of energy from each hand and hurled them at Jenny.

   Jenny saw that and scrambled to un-configure herself. Her missile launching form was large and stationary, an easy target. Jenny returned to her normal form and managed to dodge one purple energy ball but the other ball slammed into her left leg, causing her to spin and fall to the ground.

   As Jenny picked herself off the ground she found that she couldn't move her left leg. She looked down and saw that the leg was encased in tendrils of purple energy. Try as she might, she couldn't make her leg move.

   "It's a disruption charge, designed to impair movement in machines." Viruz explained as he landed near Jenny, answering her unspoken question. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way, XJ-9. You could come with me right now or I'll take you by force. I suggest you choose the path of least resistance."

   "Go blow a gasket!" Jenny said defiantly.

   "Oh well, I tried." Viruz sighed. His 8-foot-tall form towered over Jenny as he formed balls of energy in his hands. He pointed them at Jenny.

Wakeman residence

   When Mrs. Wakeman lost abruptly contact with Jenny's monitor earlier, she had quickly readjusted XJ-9's Global Monitoring System to allow her to see through Jenny's eyes. When she saw the Cluster robot's image on the screen and noted its unfamiliar design, she then accessed some detailed files she had on the different kinds of Cluster machines. (AN: I'll explain where those files came from later)

   A moment later, one of the screens on the monitoring system displayed a file identifying the robot as a VRZ-class machine, alternately designated "Viruz". Scrutinizing the file, Mrs. Wakeman found that the Cluster had only made one of the Viruz robots, not mass-producing the design. Reading more, she found that the reason for that was actually pretty mundane.

   The Cluster queen, Vexus, had called for the creation of an assimilation-type robot. It's primary purpose to bring other machines under its control. Robotic Cluster designers had created Viruz and had it field-tested in the presence of Vexus. The test had actually gone pretty well until Viruz experienced a weapons malfunction which caused him to send a ball of energy right at Vexus.

   This, of course, angered the Cluster ruler. It looked as if she was gonna destroy Viruz but she restrained herself, seeing potential in the design. Nonetheless, she ordered the Cluster designers not to mass-produce the VRZ model, leaving Viruz the one and only robot of its type. At the end of the file was stated that the VRZ robot was given as an aide to a robot called Yomex, the Grand Marshal of the Cluster.

   Mrs. Wakeman frowned, the file had said that Viruz was an "assimilation-type" robot, built to control other machines. And knowing the Cluster's interest in XJ-9…

   The doctor stood up, she grabbed a portable version of the monitoring system and something that looked like a weapon. She then went out of the house and into her car. A moment later, a kitten was almost splattered across the pavement as Mrs. Wakeman sped down the streets toward Tremorton High.

Tremorton High

   Brad looked out of the large, gaping hole that had once been a wall and saw Jenny's fight with another robot. He and some classmates started cheering her on as she fought what he guessed was a Cluster robot. His cheers grew into concern as the fight progressed. The enemy robot seemed to be giving Jenny a handful.

   "Come on, Jenny!" he shouted, although he knew Jenny was most likely so concentrated on the battle that she didn't hear him. "Take him down!"

   He saw Jenny turn into a big contraption and cheered as he saw her fire a barrage of missiles at the robot. But his cheers stopped as he saw the robot hit Jenny with a ball of energy, causing her to crumple to the ground.

   "Jenny!" Brad yelled as he ran out of the hole in the classroom wall, ignoring the teacher who called out to him. As he ran toward Jenny, he saw the Cluster robot land in front of her. The robot formed balls of energy with his hands and pointed them at Jenny.

   "No!" Brad heard someone scream. He turned and saw Sheldon pointing a large weapon at the Cluster robot. "Don't you dare lay a hand on Jenny!"

   The burst from Sheldon's weapon slammed into the back of the Cluster robot, knocking him some distance away. Jenny used that opportunity to activate her pigtail boosters. She flew off the ground, her left leg hung limply.

   "Thanks, Sheldon!" Jenny called out.

   "A-anytime, J-jenny." Sheldon stuttered, blushing and wearing a goofy smile.

   "INSOLENT BIOLOGICAL FILTH!!!" they suddenly heard. It was the Cluster robot, looking very pissed off. He pointed a hand at Sheldon.

   "Sheldon, look out!" Bard and Jenny warned, but Viruz fired before Sheldon could even move. The purple blast slammed into Sheldon, throwing him 20 feet way. The boy lay on the ground, smoking.

   "SHELDON!" Jenny and Brad both screamed. Jenny flew toward the still form of Sheldon and landed beside him on her good leg. Brad ran towards them and knelt down beside Sheldon.

   Brad winced, seeing Sheldon's injuries and smelling the burned-meat aroma that came from the boy. Jenny scanned Sheldon with her sensors, he was still alive but badly burned. She looked up at Viruz, her face a mask of fury. Sheldon may have been annoying, but he was still a friend. And seeing a friend hurt was one good way to get her furious.

   "Take care of Sheldon." She simply said to Brad as she rocketed toward Viruz.

   "You're gonna pay for that!" Jenny said as she sped toward Viruz, deploying her Fists of Fury.

   "Your friend brought it upon himself." Viruz said as he dodged a swipe from Jenny. Angrily, she threw out punches with her oversized fists. But her anger, coupled with the dead weight of her left leg, hampered her ability to maneuver properly and hit Viruz. The Cluster Commander simply dodged the punches and literally flew circles around Jenny.

   Viruz smirked as he grabbed Jenny's neck from behind. "You were foolish to let your emotions get the better of you, it made you lose whatever efficiency you had in combat."

   He then ran a disruption charge down from his hand onto Jenny's body. Jenny twitched uncontrollably as the charge ran through her. Viruz then stopped and Jenny hung limp from his hand. A probe extended from the palm of Viruz's free hand. He pressed this to the side of Jenny's head. He leaned in close and whispered: "Now you shall see why I am called 'Viruz'."

   Jenny attempted to struggle free, but her limbs wouldn't respond. Error messages scrolled before her eyes as Viruz's override virus began to take hold…

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. Please review this chapter, I'll try to get the next out as soon as I can.

Extra Note: BTW, in case you want to know how my OC s look like just go to mpcp13.deviantart.com. I've posted pictures of Yomex and Viruz. Also, there is a picture of another OC, named ADAX, which I will introduce in succeeding chapters. Finally, I also created a pic for the concept of Jenny as queen of the Cluster.      


	5. Corruption

Author's Note: Man, I cannot believe I left this fic idle for too long! I gotta stop spending too much time on deviantart.com. Anyway, thanks to all the reviewers for the last chapters. To those who looked at the drawings of my OC s, I must apologize for not drawing them in the style of the Cluster. I really have difficulty imitating the insect-like shapes of the Cluster robots. And as for the comment about my "spiky-haired" description of Brad, I need to clear something up. Brad's hair in this fic is the same as his hair on the show, I just used the word "spiky" to describe it because I couldn't think of another word. Sorry, for the confusion.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Corruption

Outside Tremorton High

   Viruz smiled gleefully as a message scrolled before his eyes. It confirmed that his override virus had control of XJ-9's systems. His smile grew wider as he felt XJ-9's rage and defiance through the newly created link he had with her mind. He could have easily erased XJ-9's core programming and replaced it with a likeness of his own mind, but Grand Marshal Yomex had ordered him to preserve XJ-9's "personality".

   The purple tendrils of energy that encased XJ-9's body disappeared as Viruz deactivated the disruption field. Jenny's body immediately straightened and snapped a salute at Viruz. The High commander felt the true mind of XJ-9 feel indignant, frustrated, and outraged as she tried to reassume control of her body. But Viurz's control was total.

   He mentally ordered the body of Jenny to board his craft. Jenny's body obediently saluted and flew toward the High Commander's ship, which was lying in the middle of the road. As XJ-9 boarded the Stealth Wasp, Viruz looked down at the two human friends of XJ-9. He flew toward them.

   As he landed in front of them, the red-haired human boy cowered in fear. Viruz smiled, he enjoyed seeing fear in biologicals. His internal files stated that this human's designation was "Bradley", alternately designated "Brad". He knew that XJ-9 was fond of this human and considered him to be her best friend.

   "I see that you fear me, Bradley." Viruz said as he towered over Brad. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you."

   Viruz saw the human take a deep breath. The human spoke, trying and failing to sound courageous. "L-let Jenny go."

   "Let her go?" Viruz said. "But you certainly saw that she boarded my craft willingly."

   "Yeah, right!" Brad said sarcastically. "I knew you did something to her. Whatever it is, you'd better undo it, o-or else."

   Viruz smirked. "Or else what?"

   With that, Brad managed to summon enough courage to give Viruz a kick. This, of course, just led Brad to hop around in pain. Viruz raised a non-existent eyebrow in amusement. He reached down and grabbed the boy by the back of his shirt.

   "My, my, but you are a feisty one." Viruz said with a falsely pleasant tone. He pointed at Sheldon. "I suggest that you try to control that feistiness, or you might end up like your friend."

   "W-what're you gonna do to me?" Brad asked.

   "XJ-9 seems quite fond of you. It would have a good propaganda effect on the other Cluster robots if they see that XJ-9 can care enough for a human." Viruz said. "After all, if they see that their new queen is capable of caring even for a lowly biological pet, they would deduce that she'd take even more care for her fellow machines. Namely, them."

   "Hey! Who're you calling lowly." Brad said. Suddenly, Viruz's other words registered in Brad's mind. "Wait a minute… What do you mean by 'new queen'?"

   Viruz smiled. "Don't worry, you'll understand soon enough."

   With that, Viruz started back toward his craft. Brad started to kick & scream in protest, but the High Commander didn't even seem to notice. He hefted Brad and casually tossed him into the passenger compartment of his craft. Brad landed right beside Jenny, who just sat stiffly and quietly. Viruz came down and tied up Brad.

   Viruz smiled triumphantly. He closed the craft's cockpit canopy and took off.

Mr. Wakeman's car

   Mrs. Wakeman's grip on the steering wheel tightened as she heard the alarm confirming that her worst fear had happened. XJ-9's newly installed internal diagnostic system had detected a large-scale corruption of XJ-9's internal system, apparently caused by an override virus. XJ-9 had been taken.

   The doctor quickly took a look at the portable monitoring system's screen. It showed that XJ-9 was being taken off-planet. It didn't take a lot of thought to conclude what that meant. XJ-9 was being taken to the Cluster. Mrs. Wakeman quickly changed lanes and turned back toward her house. Going to XJ-9's school was pointless since XJ-9 wasn't there anymore.

   She needed to hurry if she was ever going to get XJ-9 out of the Cluster's clutches. A part of her mind told her that it was foolish to even try to do so. She was but an aging woman, woefully lacking in physical prowess. How was she going to manage to retake XJ-9 from the forces of a robotic empire by her own self?

   The part that told her that was the logical part of her mind, the part she usually listened to. But this time she was listening to another part of her mind, a part she rarely listened to. The part that made other women protective of their children, the part that more often than not overrode logic. The part that contained the so-called "motherhood instinct".

   She was going to get XJ-9 back, she was going to get her daughter back.

Cluster Command Ship, somewhere in deep space

   Yomex sat on his command chair, waiting. He looked around the bridge of his ship and saw red & green roach drones going about their functions in an orderly and efficient manner. The Grand Marshal allowed himself a small, unnoticeable smile. He was proud of his crew's efficiency, an efficiency that surpassed any other crew's performance in the Cluster forces.

   "Grand Marshal," a green roach drone suddenly spoke up. "We have an incoming message from High Commander Viruz."

   Yomex nodded. "Put it through."

   A communications monitor emerged from the ceiling and came down in front of the Grand Marshal's command chair. Yomex watched it as an image appeared on the screen. It was the interior of Viruz's Stealth Wasp.

   "Greetings, Grand Marshal." The High Commander greeted.

   "High Commander Viruz," Yomex greeted back. "I trust your mission was a success?"

   "Indeed, Sir. See for yourself." The camera within Viruz's ship zoomed out slightly. Yomex saw the image of XJ-9, sitting perfectly still. There was a slight purple glow in her eyes.

   "I trust that you preserved her core programming, her personality?"

   "Yes, Sir. I have."

   "Very well," Yomex said. He frowned as he saw the image of a human boy. Bound & gagged, the boy struggled to free himself.

   "Why have you brought along this… human?"

   "Well, Sir, I thought it would be a good propaganda effect if the others in the Cluster saw that their new queen truly is caring, even toward a human. Wouldn't that rally more of them to our side?"

   Yomex nodded. "I see your point. Very well, High Commander, I shall await your arrival."

   "I shall be there momentarily, Grand Marshal." Viruz said, signing off. The image on the monitor disappeared as it receeded up the ceiling.

   Yomex leaned back on his chair. Soon, his rebellion would culminate and his drive toward power would be realized. He would soon have the power that Vexus denied him, power that was rightfully his. Yomex allowed himself another smile. Yes, soon indeed.

Wakeman residence, Tremorton

   Mrs. Wakeman's car swerved into the driveway. Not even bothering to park properly nor to turn off the car's engine, she jumped out and quickly headed for her house. As she did so the portable monitoring system intercepted a news signal. It was, of course, programmed to intercept signals that had something to do with possible threats.

   Nora Wakeman shot a look at the portable monitoring system's screen. On it was a live feed from a news helicopter. It showed an image of Tremorton High.

   "We are now flying over Tremorton High School which, only minutes ago, came under attack by an unknown robot." Mrs. Wakeman heard the commentary by the reporter on the chopper. The image on the screen zoomed in on a boy being taken aboard an ambulance. Mrs. Wakeman recognized the boy as Sheldon, one of XJ-9's friends. "As you can see, there's been one student seriously injured in the attack. Witnesses say that the robot did battle with a local robot student known as XJ-9, AKA Jenny Wakeman, and captured her. There have also been unconfirmed reports that the attacker also kidnapped another student…"

   The doctor didn't bother to hear the rest of the news. The situation had become much more serious. Not only had the Cluster kidnapped XJ-9, it also appeared that they had kidnapped a human. And Dr. Wakeman guessed that it was most likely XJ-9's friend, Bradley. She needed to get them both back.

   She bolted down toward her basement laboratory. She made her way past the clutter in the lab and came to a stop in front of a thick, metal door. She punched a few keys on a keypad on the door. With a hiss and a loud mechanical creaking sound, it opened.

   She stepped inside, within the room was a wasp-like craft. It was a Cluster Stealth Wasp tha thad crashed a few weeks earlier, Dr. Wakeman had later determined that it was because of a malfunction while on a reconnaissance flight. Dr. Wakeman had sent Jenny to recover it. After that, she had repaired the craft herself.

   She had learned much from this particular Cluster ship. Not only was it an amazing piece of Cluster technology to study, it had also contained a wealth of information about the Cluster within its databanks. The information about Viruz, which she had accessed earlier, had actually came from this craft. Now, she was going to use this very craft to go after XJ-9 and Bradley.

Author's Note: Well, that's it for now. I promise to try to get the next one out as soon as I can. Please read and review. 


	6. Reawakening

Author's Note: Hey, thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter. I know that Mrs. Wakeman having a Cluster ship was kinda convenient, but then the off switch on that ant drone was also kinda convenient. Anyway, here's Chapter 6.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Reawakening

Wakeman residence, Tremorton

   Dr. Wakeman took another look at the portable monitoring system's screen. XJ-9's signal was gone, apparently she had been taken beyond the range of the monitoring system. But that didn't matter, Mrs. Wakeman already had that problem pegged. She grabbed several tools and headed toward the refurbished Stealth Wasp, carrying along the portable monitoring system.

   She climbed aboard the craft and started to open a part of the craft's instrument panel with her tools. She then took the portable monitoring system and started to hotwire them onto the Cluster vessel's instrument panel. A moment later, the jerry-rigged monitor came to life. On it was a blip representing XJ-9. The monitor showed that she was already light years away.

   Realizing that she had no time to lose, Dr. Wakeman jumped off the craft. She started scooting around her basement laboratory, grabbing several pieces of equipment and weapons and shoving them into the craft. It would've been a comical sight had there been anyone to witness it. Finally, she was done. Putting on some sort of spacesuit, Mrs. Wakeman started to climb aboard the Cluster ship. But as she climbed up, the logical part of her mind managed to retake the reigns of her mind.

   'Very well, Nora,' that part of her said to her. 'You've already decided firmly to go on this foolhardy adventure, so I guess trying to stop you would be pointless. Still, are you sure you would want to proceed with such an undertaking ALONE?'

   Dr. Wakeman paused. As always, that part of her mind made perfect sense. But who would she take? Certainly there was no one else she could turn to for help. She considered taking one of the other XJ-class robots. But no, they were inferior designs that would most likely be more burden than help. Besides, their computer brains would be easy prey for assimilator robots like Viruz, and the last thing she wanted was to give the Cluster another robotic puppet.

   But even as she thought that, Mrs. Wakeman started to realize something. 'Computer brains…' her mind said silently, repeating part of her previous thoughts. Computer brains would be easy prey for Cluster assimilation, but what about a machine whose brain WASN'T computer-based? The doctor turned her head around and looked right at an almost unnoticeable green pod in her lab. 'Yes,' she thought. 'It just might work…'

   She walked toward the green pod and stared at it for about a second. She then put her hand to the side of the pod and made a sweeping motion, brushing some of the dirt off the pod's surface. She looked at the stenciled words that the dust had concealed for about 12 years. The word, all written in capital letters, were: ADVANCED DEFENDER ANDROID, EXPERIMENTAL.  

Viruz's Stealth Wasp

   Jenny mentally slumped in defeat. She had repeated tried to regain control of her body, but all her efforts had been in vain. She felt Viruz laugh at her futile efforts through the link he used to control her systems. She felt helpless as Viruz mentally taunted her inability to regain control.

   Jenny looked through her own eyes. She could still see and hear, but only passively. She couldn't actively control any of her visual/auditory sensors. Looking through her eyes, she saw the exchange that had happened between Viruz & another robot through the communications system of Viruz's craft.

   She had heard what both robots had said & realized that Viruz had indeed told her the truth, albeit partially. They really were against Vexus and they really did want her to be their queen. Though, judging from what she heard, she would be nothing more than a puppet queen. She heard the slight sound of struggling beside her. Concentrating on the periphery of her vision, she saw Brad bound and gagged, struggling to get free. Upn seeing that, she felt a pang of guilt. The only reason Brad was here was because he was HER friend. Now he was being taken along with her to the Cluster to be a slave, and it was all her fault.

   'Don't worry, XJ-9,' Viruz's voice said in her mind, startling her. ' We won't hurt your human friend. In fact, he will be well taken care of since he will be your royal pet.'

   Jenny felt anger rise within her as she heard those words. She mentally snapped at Viruz: 'I'll get you for this, you creep! For this, for kidnapping Brad, and for hurting Sheldon!'

   Viruz laughed in her mind. 'I'd like to see you try, XJ-9.' 

   Furious, Jenny temporarily forgot her despair as she again tried to retake control of her systems. But just like before, it was all in vain. Viruz's amused laugh came through Jenny's mind again, taunting her helplessness and the futility of her actions.

   'If I'd have known that preserving my victims' minds would be this amusing I wouldn't have been so quick to overwrite the core programming of my past victims!'

   'You smug jerk!' jenny mentally screamed. "I'll get you, you hear me?! I"LL GET YOU!!!'

   Viruz just laughed harder.

Wakeman residence, Tremorton

   Dr. Wakeman's hands flew over the keys on the pod's terminal as she initiated the activation sequence on the pod. But just before she struck the final key that would begin the activation sequence she hesitated, remembering why she had locked away the machine within the pod in the first place. Was it really a wise decision to activate such an unpredictable and aggressive machine, even for this?

   Mrs. Wakeman shrugged that thought away. It was necessary, this was the only robot she had built that could possibly resist any override program. She knew that fact first hand. Before she had stored the Advance Defender Android, eXperimental, or ADAX, away, she had tried and failed repeated to correct ADAX's faulty programming. No matter what she had tried, ADAX's brain had resisted it all.

   That was because ADAX's brain was different from any other robot brain in existence. Twelve years ago, before the XJ-series had been conceived, ADAX had been the prototype design for the Global Robotic Response Unit. All the most top-shelf hardware of that time had gone into ADAX's design, ensuring that ADAX would make a perfect Global Robotic Response Unit.

   But all that hardware would've been for naught without an adequate control processor to run it. And since the computer technology of that time proved to be inadequate, Dr. Wakeman had turned to a radical solution: She was going to use an actual biological brain to run ADAX's systems. Of course, she couldn't use a human brain. She, instead, used a chimpanzee brain, which she managed to procure from a biological research lab. She had emptied the chimpanzee brain of all memory and did a few modifications on it, such as bioengineering it to be capable of surviving and operating in a non-biological system. She then wrote ADAX's core programming onto the brain.

   What she hadn't counted on was that not all of the information inside the chimp brain had been completely removed prior to the programming. Some of the chimpanzee's instinctive aggressiveness managed to remain and had somehow merged with ADAX's core programming. This, consequently, made ADAX a highly aggressive and unpredictable android. In fact, his aggressiveness reached the extent that Mrs. Wakeman had to shut ADAX down after her reprogramming efforts failed to remove the aggressiveness. The biological nature of ADAX's brain somehow made his programming resistant to tampering.

   Now, she was going to reactivate ADAX. She wasn't entirely sure what the consequences would be, but she was ready to face them. If this was her only real chance for success in her endeavor, then she was willing to pay the price. She pressed the final key.

   There was a loud hissing  and a metallic creaking sound as the green pod slowly split open. Dr. Wakeman drew back slightly as the pod opened like a butterfly's chrysalis, but the thing inside was definitely not a butterfly.

   It was a six-foot-tall humanoid form with a pentagonally shaped head & a body that bore some resemblance to XJ-9's body, except that this machine had more masculine proportions. On it's face were two eyes that bugged out slightly, making them look like chameleon eyes. It also had two arms arranged in a lopsided manner. The right arm had "normal" proportions and ended with a four-digit hand. The left, however, had an enlarged forearm and ended with a three-digit hand. The enlarged forearm was actually ADAX's sensor pod. Finally, it was painted in shades of green, giving it a vaguely "frogman-ish" appearance.

   Mrs. Wakeman then heard the whir of servos as the machine started to move. Its eyes looked around in a confused manner as its mouth opened. It started to speak.

   "What the… Where the… How…" it said with a confused voice that sounded like that of a teenage boy. Suddenly, its eyes found Dr. Wakeman. The confused look on the robot's face disappeared only to be replaced by an angry frown.

   "Wakeman!" ADAX said in a voice that sounded like a snarl. "Wakeman…"

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. I'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as I can. If my description of ADAX wasn't clear enough, there are illustrations of him and my other OC s on mpcp13.deviantart.com.  


	7. So It Begins

Author's Note: Thanks for the people who reviewed the previous chapter of my fic. Here's Chapter 7. You might notice a few differences in this chapter, that's because I can finally save the words rendered in boldface and italics.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: So It Begins

**Wakeman residence, Tremorton**

"Wakeman…" the robot said as he saw his creator before him. The very same creator who had demanded far too much of him, the one who had subjected him to the pain of repeated programming, the one who had locked him away for (he checked his internal clock) about 12 years just because he wasn't good enough.

A slight red sheen clouded his vision for a moment as his anger rose with each memory. Especially the memory of the pain he felt as his creator's reprogramming efforts induced pain signals in his biological mind's neural pathways. He clenched his fists at those memories. The reprogramming attempts had been like torture, and now, standing in front of him, was the torturer.

"Greetings, ADAX," he heard his creator say, pronouncing every letter of ADAX separately. From her tone he could tell that she was trying not to let her apprehension of him show. "It certainly has been a while."

ADAX said nothing, he just started to walk toward Dr. Wakeman in a menacing manner. He wanted nothing more than to wring the doctor's scrawny neck, to hurt her as she had hurt him. But as he came closer he felt something holding him back, something within him that wouldn't allow him to hurt Mrs. Wakeman. It wasn't his conscience or anything of the sort, it was just the fail-safe subroutine in his core programming that prevented him from hurting his creator.

He clenched his fists harder, he knew it would be futile to go against his core programming, no matter how much he wanted to. Finally, in a barely controlled tone, he said: "What do you wan't, Wakeman?"

The doctor let out a sigh, apparently relieved that the fail-safe subroutine in ADAX's programming still functioned. "I know you are not one to beat around the bush, ADAX—"

"It's Dax," ADAX interrupted. " The name's Dax."

The doctor looked at him and let out another sigh. This time it was an exasperated one. She'd had the same problem with XJ-9 as with ADAX now. They both had refused to refer to themselves with their proper designations. Why they insisted on doing so had always perplexed her. She shook that thought away and continued.

"As I was about to say, AD—, I mean, Dax. I need your help."

"Help?" ADAX said incredulously. Had he heard right? The very same person who had declared him a failure 12 years ago wanted his _help_? "With what?"

"I want you to help me retrieve two prisoners from a large extraterrestrial force." Dr. Wakeman answered.

ADAX snorted. "Another assignment for me to fail in, right? So afterwards you can call me a failure, torture me with a friggin' reprogramming attempt, then shove me into a pod for another 12 years?"

He sneered. "Not happening, Wakeman. Why don't you just lock me up again and send whatever robot you made to replace me to go instead. It would save both of us the trouble."

"I would, if the robot I replaced you with weren't one of the prisoners."

"Let me get this straight, you want me, a _failure_, to help you rescue my replacement who was dumb enough to get his/herself _captured_?" ADAX actually laughed at this. "What do I get out of it?"

"Get out of it?" Dr. Wakeman asked. "You're my creation, you were built to do as you are told without expecting rewards for it."

ADAX shook his head. "Tisk, tisk, after all this time you still haven't gotten it, have you? I'm not some mindless slave you can order around. I am my own machine, Wakeman. I do only what I wanna do."

"Which is why I locked you up in the first place." Mrs. Wakeman muttered.

"That's bull!" ADAX yelled angrily. "You locked me up right after some stupid assignment you sent me on just because I made a few mistakes!"

"A _few_ mistakes?!" Dr. Wakeman said, getting angry as well. "You destroyed two buildings, damaged four more, & injured several people. And all of that just to apprehend a pair of bank robbers!"

"Hey!" ADAX said, jabbing a finger at the doctor. "I got those two. As far as I'm concerened, I accomplished that mission's objective."

"Yes, and it was accomplished with a large amount of unnecessary collateral damage!"

"I still got it done, and that's all that mattered."

"You…" Mrs. Wakeman started angrily. "You…"

She sighed and calmed herself down. "I don't have time for argument. I require your assistance, and I order you to provide it!"

"No, _nein, nyet_." ADAX said defiantly. "Not unless I get something for it."

"For the love of Einstein!" Mrs. Wakeman threw up her arms in frustration. "Alright! What is it that you want?"

ADAX smirked triumphantly. "I want your word that you won't lock me up after this is done."

What? You can't be serious! A robot as reckless and aggressive as you should not be let loose to do what he wants."

"Then," ADAX said simply. "No deal."

The doctor gritted her teeth. This little exchange was wasting her time and exhausting her patience. Clearly ADAX would not make things easy for her. "Fine, I promise to grant you freedom from storage after this task is completed. But on that condition that you follow my orders and with the knowledge that you will be locked up permanently if your aggressive behavior and recklessness results in anyone coming to harm. Understood?"

ADAX looked at her for a moment before finally saying: "Alright, Wakeman. You got yourself a deal."

**Cluster Command Ship, somewhere in deep space**

Grand Marshal Yomex sat on his command chair, waiting. He peered out of the bridge's visual ports, his trapezoid-shaped eyes searching the blackness space outside his ship. Then, his eyes fixed on one spot. Out of the view port he saw a wormhole appear. Out of the cosmic portal came a wasp-like craft.

"Wormhole manifestation detected." A red roach drone reported, confirming what Yomex saw.

"Craft identified." A green roach drone reported. "It is High Commander Viruz, he requests permission to dock."

"By all means, let him." Yomex said as he stood up and made his way out of the bridge. He walked down several corridors and passed by several roach and ant drones who all respectfully saluted him as he passed them by. After going down a few levels he entered the ship's docking area just in time to see Viruz disembark from his Stealth Wasp. Following the High Commander in stiff cadence was a feminine-shaped blue robot dragging along a red-haired human who was restrained.

"Grand Marshal Yomex." Viruz greeted as he saluted.

"High Commander," the 5-foot-tall, orange-gold colored Yomex said, looking up to greet the 8-foot-tall, purple colored Viruz. The Grand Marshal turned to look at the blue robot that stood beside Viruz.

"Greetings, XJ-9," Yomex said. "We meet face-to-face at last."

The controlled body of XJ-9 just stood still, giving no visible acknowledgement of Yomex's words. But the smirk on Viruz's face showed that XJ-9's mind had indeed heard Yomex and was most likely mentally lashing out at both him and the High Commander. Yomex turned to face Viruz.

"You are to be commended, High Commander, for capturing XJ-9 with little damage to her person."

"Thank you, Sir." Viruz said, smiling.

Yomex then called out to two roach drones, one green and the other red. Both of whom came over immediately.

"Yes. Sir?" they both asked.

"Have XJ-9 reprogrammed, it is time for her to take on her new role as the queen of the Cluster." The Grand Marshal said to the red drone.

"At once, Sir." The drone responded. It immediately took XJ-9, who followed obediently, and went out of the docking area to another part of the ship.

"You," Yomex said to the green drone. "Take this human to his… quarters."

"Yes, Sir." The green roach drone answered curtly. It took the still struggling human youth toward the brig. Viruz and Yomex stared after the drone as it took the human boy out of the docking area. As the drone disappeared from view, Viruz turned to Yomex.

"And so it begins." Viruz said.

"Yes," Yomex answred. "Indeed it does."

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. I'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as I can. Please review.


	8. The Birth of Queen Jennifer the First

Author's Note: Here's Chapter 8. There's a cameo here from another animated robot near the end of this chapter, so look out for it.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: The Birth of Queen Jennifer the First

**Cluster Command Ship, somewhere in deep space**

_Reprogrammed. _That's what Jenny had heard the orange-gold robot say. Now the word resonated within Jenny's mind, filling her with a sense of dread. She once again forced herself to try and retake control of her body. It had been futile before, but desperation filled her and made her attempt it despite the futility. She would not be turned into some kind of puppet. No way, never. _Never_!

Looking through her own eyes, she saw that her controlled body was following a red roach drone who calmly led the way to wherever they were going. She focused her anger and desperation on the red drone, willing with all her might to take control of her weapons systems and blast the drone out of existence. But no, aside from the movements controlled by Viruz, she couldn't ever make her body twitch.

'RAAAHHH!!!' she silently screamed as she mentally clawed at the figurative cage in her mind. She felt the amusement that Viruz drew from her rage. That, of course, just made even more angry and desperate.

'I can beat this! I can beat you, Viruz!' Jenny mentally lashed out. 'And when I do I'll _rip you into pieces!'_

'Be at ease, XJ-9,' Viruz purred in her mind. 'Soon you will no longer need to struggle.'

Jenny silently screamed at him some more, but Viruz did nothing except to chuckle in amusement. Still fuming within, Jenny saw that the red drone had stopped in front of the door. Her controlled body obediently stopped as well. She saw the drone raise a hand toward what appeared to be an intercom button.

"Chief Engineer Fixit," the drone said. "Your subject has arrived."

"Really? Excellent!" a voice with a vaguely British-like accent answered. "Do bring her in."

The door opened and the red drone stepped inside. Immediately Jenny's body followed against her will. As Jenny continued her futile attempts to get control she looked around her. She was in a laboratory that looked a lot like a set from a Frankenstein movie. Suddenly, a blue robot stepped into her line of sight. It was designed to look like a praying mantis.

"XJ-9!" it said with the same voice Jenny heard over the intercom. "It's so marvelous to finally see you. I've heard many, many incredible tales about you."

Mentally Jenny cursed at the blue robot, but outwardly her body just stared into space. Seeing this the blue mantis robot, Fixit, frowned and leaned closer to inspect Jenny. "Hmm… a purple glow in the eyes. No doubt the handiwork of High Commander Viruz."

He thoughtfully scratched his chin with one mantis-like foreleg and waved away the red roach drone with the other. The red drone left without a word as Fixit continued to stare thoughtfully at Jenny.

"I do hope he hasn't overwritten your core programming, XJ-9." Fixit muttered. "It would make my job much faster if he didn't."

With that he went over to a terminal. After a few taps on the terminal's keyboard a metal pod came out of the floor and encased Jenny's body. Realizing that the pod was a reprogramming device, Jenny's attempts to retake control became all the more desperate. But her attempts were just as ineffective as her previous ones.

Then, she felt some of her outer coverings being taken off only to be replaced by new ones. She barely had time to contemplate on the violation of her person her mind suddenly exploded with an influx of raw data. Her mind reeled as the new data overwhelmed the old, integrating and writing themselves onto her core programming.

Still reeling from the data influx, her mind started to catch images. One was of her shaking hands with Viruz and agreeing to help him. Another was of her convincing Brad to go with her to the Cluster. Yet another showed her saying good-bye to her Mom just as she left with Viruz and Brad.

"Wait a minute…" her mind noted numbly. "That's… not right…"

Then her mind was overwhelmed and everything went white.

**Cluster Stealth Wasp, low Earth orbit**

As the refurbished Stealth Wasp flew out of the reach of Earth's gravitational field Dr. Wakeman started to key in coordinates on one of the craft's control terminals. Beside her, ADAX studied several photographs and diagrams. The doctor had told him to look them over so that he would familiarize himself with who they were rescuing.

"Hmm…" ADAX said as he studied a few pictures of Brad. "Goofy looking."

Mrs. Wakeman ignored that as she continued to calibrate the craft's navigational systems. ADAX set aside the pictures of Brad and stated looking over the pictures and schematics of Jenny. ADAX arched up non-existent eyebrows and whistled appreciatively.

"Not bad, not bad at all." He said. "I'm almost sorry that she's technically my sister."

This time Dr. Wakeman didn't ignore that comment. She looked up from the instrument panel and shot ADAX a look.

"What?" ADAX asked. "I can't comment on how hot my sister looks?"

The doctor just shook her head despairingly and put her attention back to the instrument panel. After a few more taps she finally said. "Very well, that should do it. Prepare for wormhole travel."

"You sure you put in those coordinates right, Wakeman?"

"Yes, ADAX, I'm positive that the coordinates I input will get us to our destination. With a 6% margin of error, of course."

"Six percent?" ADAX asked, sounding unsure. "Just how bad would it be if, thanks to a cruel twist of fate, we get one of the six percent?"

"We could end up on the wrong side of the galaxy," Mrs. Wakeman answered. Then her voice took on a mischievous tone. "Or we could end up within a star or a black hole."

"Great," ADAX muttered. "Just friggin' great. You choose now of all times to show that you do have a sense of humor, albeit a twisted one."

"I wouldn't worry, ADAX." Dr. Wakeman reassured him. "It is highly unlikely that an error will occur, the odds are against it."

"Wakeman, you're talkin' to _me_ here." ADAX said. "You know how I feel when somebody tells me the odds."

Mrs. Wakeman didn't reply. She activated the wormhole drive and a cosmic portal opened. She flew the craft into it, after it entered the wormhole then started to shrink until, finally, it disappeared.

**Cluster Command Ship**

Grand Marshal Yomex sat on his command chair. In front of him were several communications monitors. Viruz stood beside him, regarding the faces on the monitors' screens with a smirk. It was then that Yomex spoke.

"The time is at hand, my comrades." He said. "All fleet commanders prepare your respective battle groups for the jump to Cluster Prime. Ready your crews and ships and wait for my signal."

"Yes, Sir!" The fleet commanders, all Smitus-types, answered as one. Each of the commanders gave an elaborate boast before signing off. At each boast Viruz snorted in contempt. Smitus-types knew how to boast, but very little about effective commanding. In other words they were all talk and nothing else. Of course, he kept that thought to himself.

Finally , all of the faces on the communications screens disappeared as they signed off. All except one, it was a silver humanoid robot with a skull-like head. Over its body was draped a white cloak. "General Grievous, you wish to say something?"

"Yes, Grand Marshal," the general replied. "You gave orders to the fleet commanders, but what about me and my ground troops, will we not join the fight?"

"You and your landing forces will stay behind until I give the order. Take no insult from this, but your troops are basically useless in space combat." Yomex pointed out. "Only after we have downed the planetary shielding grid over Cluster Prime will you and your troops come into play. In the meantime, you must sit back and wait."

"Very well, Sir. I shall await your command." General Grievous answered. He then reached into his cloak and pulled out two cylindrical devices. Suddenly, blue and green energy blades shot out of the cylinders with a _snap-hiss _sound. The general performed an elaborate salute with the weapons and signed off. Viruz looked at Yomex.

"He always did have a flare for dramatic exits."

"Yes, he does." Yomex replied, nodding.

"Excuse me, Sirs." A green roach drone said, interrupting the two. "We have an incoming intercom call from Chief Engineer Fixit."

Yomex nodded. "Put him through."

The green drone pressed a button. A voice then spoke out. "Sorry to interrupt you, Sirs."

"It's quite alright, Chief Engineer Fixit." Yomex said. "You have something to say?"

"Yes, Sir." Fixit's voice said. "Only this: Queen Jennifer the First has been born."

Upon hearing that, Viruz beamed widely and looked at Yomex. The Grand Marshal nodded and smiled as well. "Excellent, Chief Engineer. Most excellent."

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. In case you didn't catch the cameo, General Grievous is that droid general from the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated micro series. Anyway, please review. I'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as I can.


	9. I Give You Queen Jennifer the First

Author's Notes: Thanks to all who left a review for me in the last chapter. Here's chapter 9, sorry if it's kinda rushed but it's enrollment week here in the Philippines and, needless to say, I've been kinda busy. Well, anyway, on with the chapter. There's gonna be another cameo here, this time from another Nicktoon.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: I Give You Queen Jennifer The First

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship, somewhere in deep space**

The short, orange-gold robot that was Grand Marshal Yomex marched down the corridors of his command ship. Following him stride for stride was a tall, purple, robotic High Commander who towered over the diminutive Grand Marshal. Together they made their way past respectfully saluting drones until they finally stopped in front of a door. The Grand Admiral pushed an intercom button that was right beside the door.

"Chief Engineer Fixit," Yomex said into the intercom. "I believe you wanted to see me?"

"Ah, Grand Marshal," a voice greeted over the intercom. "Do come in."

The door opened and the two robot commanders stepped in. Inside, a blue mantis-like robot greeted them with a wide smile. The blue robot led the two over to a pod which he proudly patted affectionately.

"Grand Marshal, High Commander," Fixit said with a flamboyantly introductory tone. "I give you Queen Jennifer the First."

The blue mantis drone that was the Chief Engineer pressed a button on the side of the pod. At first nothing seemed to happen, but then the pod hissed as it started to open. As the halves of the pod fell away, Yomex and Viruz saw the robot that the pod had concealed within itself. It was XJ-9, but very different from the XJ-9 that Viruz had captured.

"Well what do have here…" Viruz muttered.

The first thing Yomex and Viruz observed was different about XJ-9 was that her "ponytails" were attached to a triangular golden headpiece atop her head. From the headpiece grew antennae that mimicked those of Queen Vexus herself. Also, the shaped of XJ-9's eyes had been slightly altered. Whereas before they were large and puppy-dog-like, now they were slightly almond-shaped with the "eyelids" painted a dark blue hue.

Yomex and Virus exchanged a look of amusement before looking back to take in the other cosmetic changes on XJ-9. They noticed that the shapes of her "top", "skirt", and "boots" had been altered to make them appear sharper and more stylized. To top that off, the parts that represented XJ-9's "clothes" were slightly trimmed with bright orange and golden paint jobs. The two high-ranking Cluster robots exchanged another look before regarding Fixit with approving nods.

"You certainly made her regal-looking enough," Viruz said. "But what about her new reprogrammed self?"

"See for yourself, Sirs." Fixit said with a self-appreciating smile. He reached over to Jenny's head with a mantis-like foreleg and gave it a slight tap. Immediately XJ-9's eyes flew open.

"What the… how…" she said in a confused tone. She then looked down at her body and the confusion disappeared from her voice. "Gah, I can't believe I let you guys convince me to look like this. I look like a Vexus wannabe! Heck, I could almost hear Britt and Tiff's insults right now."

The Grand Marshal and High Commander's non-existent eyebrows arched up at that. They were both surprised and taken aback by what XJ-9 had just said and how she had acted. It was as if she had agreed to aid them in their rebellion in the first place. Viruz sent an encrypted signal directly to Yomex stating these sentiments.

[It appears the reprogramming was a success, Sir. XJ-9 seems to really believe that she agreed to play the part of a queen voluntarily. What's more, she seems to be herself.]

[Yes, a truly brilliant job on Fixit's part in preserving her personality.] Yomex agreed in the same silent, encrypted language that Jenny couldn't hear. [Well then, let's play along, shall we?]

"Um, yes, Queen Jennifer, the stylization do seem to be overly flamboyant." Yomex said, inreply to the comments voiced out by the newly-minted Queen Jennifer. "But to be considered a queen by others one must look like a queen to them."

"I feel like a dork." Queen Jennifer said. "And how many times must I tell you, it's Jenny. Just call me Jenny, okay? None of this 'Queen' stuff. Yeesh, and I thought being called XJ-9 was bad!"

"I'm sorry, Your Highness, but it just wouldn't be proper for us to refer to you in such as a manner now that you are queen." Viruz said, outwardly impassive but inwardly bursting with amusement. It was lucky for him that his mental link to XJ-9 had been broken when she had been reprogrammed. If it hadn't then "Queen Jennifer" might have noticed his mental laughter.

Jenny sighed. "Yeah, whatever. Let's just get this over with. The sooner we get this done the sooner I can teach the Cluster robots how to really be free."

Yomex and Viruz smiled to themselves and exchanged a chuckle through their private encrypted channel. Fixit's reprogramming appeared to be excellent. XJ-9 was fully convinced that she had willingly agreed to be their queen. Also, her personality was intact, and that was important if they were to win over the population of the Cluster. Yomex sent a silent encrypted message of approval to the Chief Engineer.

[All in a day's work, Sir.] Fixit transmitted back.

"Hey…" Queen Jennifer suddenly said. "I just remembered, where _is_ Brad anyway? He came with us, right?"

Yomex and Viruz's minds suddenly seemed to freeze up. _The human!_ They had forgotten about him. Sure, XJ-9 was now playing along with their scheme thanks to Fixit's reprogramming, but the human was not. And it would be potentially disastrous to leave the human that way.

"Oh, uh, well," Viruz said, looking for a plausible excuse for Brad's absence. "He's sleeping in his quarters. He was, um, jet-lagged from the long trip."

Jenny raised an eyebrow. Oh well, let him sleep, he deserves it. I'm really thankful that he came along to help, even after his parents practically went nuts about it."

"Er… right." Viruz said uneasily. It was then that the High Commander spoke to Yomex via the encrypted channel. [I'd forgotten about the boy, what do we do about him, Sir?]

[We must find a way to make the human play along, it is too much of a liability if we do not.] the Grand Marshal replied. To Fixit he transmitted: [Chief Engineer, could you come up with a way to… reprogram a human mind?]

[_Reprogram _a _human_ mind?] Fixit said incredulously. At first he thought that Yomex was joking, but then he remembered that the Grand Marshal was not one to joke. He answered slowly. [I might be able to find a way, although, to tell you the truth, I've never attempted such a thing before.]

[You must try,] Yomex said. [We will stall XJ-9, once we get her out of here you must have the boy brought here and must reprogram him. It is absolutely essential that you succeed in doing so.]

[Yes, Sir.] Fixit responded unsurely.

"Well, come along then, Queen Jennifer." Yomex said. "We must prepare for your address to the Cluster."

"Alright," Jenny said. "Just don't let the speech sound too presidential, okay? I already _look_ like a dork, I don't wanna sound like one."

Yomex gave a small laugh. "Of course."

With that Yomex and Viruz led Jenny out of the Chief Engineer's lab. As the three exited the lab, Fixit started to ponder on the Grand Marshal's latest order. 'Reprogramming a human mind,' he mentally said to himself. 'An intriguing project, I only wish that I would have more time to figure out _how_ to do so.' He unconsciously looked around his lab, deep in thought. It was then that his eyes caught sight of the two halves of the reprogramming pod he had used on XJ-9. An idea started to ferment in his head.

If he could just adapt the reprogramming protocols he had used on XJ-9 to work on a biological brain instead of a robotic one he just might be able to do it. But first, he needed to study the operational processes of a human brain. And since there was only one human brain aboard…

He reached for the intercom. "This is Chief Engineer Fixit to the brig."

"Yes, Chief Engineer," a voice answered. "What can I do for you?"

"I believe that you are in possession of a human prisoner." Fixit said. "Would you please bring him here?"

"It shall be done, Chief Engineer." The voice said.

Fixit clicked off the intercom. He proceeded to a terminal and started to work on it.

**Cluster Stealth Wasp, traversing a wormhole**

"ADAX," Dr. Wakeman said in a slightly annoyed tone. "Kindly remove your legs from the instrument panels."

ADAX, who was in a relaxed posture with his hands behind his head and his legs on the Stealth Wasp's instrument panels, didn't even look at her. "I told you before, Wakeman, my handle's Dax. And why the heck should I move my feet, you're not using these panels yet."

Nora Wakeman sighed exasperatedly. "No, but I might need to use those panels later."

"So, I'll put 'em down when you use the panels." The green robot replied, inwardly enjoying the fact that he was annoying the scientist.

"ADAX," Mrs. Wakeman said, emphasizing each letter. "Put your feet down this instant!"

"Uh…" ADAX said petulantly. "No."

The doctor threw her arms up in frustration, questioning for the umpteenth time her decision to reactivate ADAX. Not only were his aggressive disposition and recklessness liabilities, he also proved to be irreverent and very hard to work with. In short, ADAX was behaving like a jerk.

Suddenly, an alarm sounded on one of the cockpit's instrument panels. Immediately forgetting about her thoughts on ADAX, Dr. Wakeman quickly looked over the panel. On it were the words: WARNING, NAVIGATIONAL SYSTEMS MALFUNCTIONING. STAND BY FOR REENTRY INTO NORMAL SPACE.

"Malfunction?" Mrs. Wakeman whispered.

ADAX, upon hearing the word "malfunction" immediately got off his relaxed position and spun on his creator. "Malfunction?! Aw cripes, what did you do now, Wakeman?"

"I didn't do anything!" the diminutive scientist protested.

"Well you fixed this baby up," ADAX said. "So whatever's goin' wrong with it is your darn fault!"

The doctor gave ADAX a dirty look, but before she could say anything the craft exited the wormhole. Feeling that it was more urgent to tend to the craft than to argue with ADAX, she turned her attention back to the instrument panels. It was then that the another of the Stealth Wasp's panels started to beep.

Dr. Wakeman was starting to turn toward that panel when ADAX suddenly said: "Uh, Wakeman, you might wanna take a look at what's outside."

At first she was just gonna ignore that as one of ADAX's none-too-helpful statements, but something in the tone of his voice made her look anyway. What she saw made her blood turn cold. Outside their craft was a literal swarm of ships, all of them had curved, stylized surfaces and had red, pink, violet, an maroon color schemes. In the middle of that swarm of battleships was a massive red vessel that dominated their line of sight.

"Attention unidentified craft," a curt, deep voice came over the communication system. "You have encroached upon a fleet exercise of the proud Irken Armada. Please stay where you are and prepare to vaporized."

"Vaporized?!" ADAX asked in an alarmed tone. "Did that guy just say _vaporized?_!"

As if answering ADAX's question, a goofy-sounding singsong voices was heard in the background of the incoming communications signal. "Yeah, blow that thing to lots tiny pieces!"

"FIRE!" another such voice was heard. "Firefirefirefirefire!!!"

"At once, my Tallests." With that they heard no more from the Stealth Wasp's comm..

"I have a bad feeling about this…" ADAX said.

At that instant the Stealth Wasp started to shake violently as several powerful beams passed very close to it, grazing its shields.

"Holy mother of 352 dead Chihuahuas!" ADAX yelled. "GET US OUTTA HERE!!!"

Mrs. Wakeman didn't need to be told twice. She quickly grabbed the controls and started to put the refurbished Cluster ship into evasive maneuvers. The Irken vessels sped after them, guns blazing.

"By the way, Wakeman," ADAX said through gritted teeth.

"Yes?" Dr. Wakeman answered in a tight tone as she struggled with the ship's controls.

"This is still your fault."

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. I'll try to get the next chapter out as soon as I can. Thanks for reading and please review.


	10. Manipulation

Author's Note: SorryI took so long to update, it's enrollment week here in the Philippines and everything's just crazy. Anyway, I'm making up for that by making this chapter a little longer than the others.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Manipulation

**Stealth Wasp, somewhere in Irken territory**

The Stealth Wasp shook hard as a beam from an Irken weapon glanced off its fuselage. One of the occupants in the Stealth Wasp, a green robot, gave out a yell and muttered curses. The other, a small woman, was busy pulling the craft into evasive maneuvers. Behind their craft the Irken battleships were beginning to pull back, their commanders realizing that the Stealth Wasp was too small a target for them to lock onto effectively. Instead, they started to release several smaller craft which quickly sped after the Stealth Wasp.

"We gotta wormhole outta here, Wakeman," ADAX said in a panicked tone. "And I mean _now_!"

"I can't, the navigational systems are malfunctioning and it's too risky to pull a blind wormhole jump," Dr. Wakeman replied in a harried tone. She gritted her teeth as she jinked and zigzagged the craft in order to evade their Irken pursuers. "And I certainly can't repair the navigational systems under these conditions."

"Then give me weapons control so I can at least blow some of these bastards off our backs." ADAX said, the panic in his tone still evident.

"This ship has no weapons," Mrs. Wakeman mumbled to gritted teeth. "When I refurbished this vessel I found the weapons systems too damaged to repair."

"Let me get this straight, you planned to go into Cluster territory on a rescue mission in an _unarmed_ craft?!" ADAX asked incredulously. He took on a sarcastic tone. "Smart, Wakeman, real smart."

"Of course!" the doctor suddenly said. "If I activate this vessel's cloaking device those aliens won't be able to find us and thus leave us in peace, and I'll be able to repair navigational systems."

"Well, what the hack are you waitin' for?" ADAX yelled. "Do it!"

The diminutive scientist reached toward a button and pushed it, but all she got was a warning tone from one of the panels. She quickly shot a look at the panel's sceen. On it were the words: UNABLE TO COMPLY, SYSTEM DAMAGED.

"Well, where's the cloak, Wakeman?!"

"That glancing blow that hit us earlier damaged the cloaking device's power relays!"

"What?!" ADAX said in alarm. "Oh now that's just dandy—"

He was abruptly cut off as a beam slammed into one of the Stealth Wasp's four engines, causing the craft to shake violently. Alarms wailed in the cockpit as Dr. Wakeman struggled with a panel in order to deactivate the now flaming fourth engine. After much effort she managed to turn off the burning engine, but now the craft's speed was reduced.

"Wakeman," ADAX said in a low and dangerous tone, all traces of panic gone from his voice. "Give me the schematics for the cloaking device."

"Huh?" Mrs. Wakeman asked in a surprised manner, not noticing the edge to ADAX's voice. "What for?"

"Just give it to me, you old hag." ADAX said in a calm yet impatient way. The doctor gave him a dirty look as she pointed to a panel. A connection prod extended from ADAX's left hand, he used it to connect to one of the panel's terminal ports. He pulled it out after downloading the schematics and reached for his back. A panel opened on his back and released a weapon that looked like a cross between an oversized staple gun and a sci-fi prop. ADAX grabbed it.

"What're you going to do, ADAX?" Dr. Wakeman asked.

"I'm gonna try to repair that cloaking device and try to take some of the heat off us." ADAX said. He rubbed his weapon affectionately against his cheek. "Besides, Miffy and I haven't seen action in a long time."

At first Mrs. Wakeman wondered who "Miffy" was. After a moment she realized that ADAX had been referring to his weapon. 'ADAX really is one of my more eccentric creations." she thought as she turned to look at the green robot, but the said robot was already going into the crawlspace that led to a hatch that exited the ship.

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship, somewhere in deep space**

"Hey!" a red-haired human boy screamed as he banged on a metal door with his fists. "Let me outta here, you walking piles of junk!"

He had been banging on the door and yelling his lungs out since he had been tossed into his cell. He didn't really know what this was all about and why he had been brought here, but right now hw didn't really care. A part of him knew that what he was doing was just a waste of energy and lung power, but it was better that sulking around in self-pity. Besides, he just might annoy some of the Cluster robots who kept watch outside his cell.

Suddenly, he flew back as the door was thrown open. The human boy, Brad, slammed back first into the cell wall. He was rubbing his painful back and grumbling something incoherent when a large robot stepped inside. Brad looked up. It was a robot that looked just like the ant drone courier who had first extended the Cluster's invitation to Jenny, except that this one was black instead of red.

"You will come with me, human." It said in a flat, mirthless voice. He leaned over and picked up Brad. He opened his mouth and swallowed Brad into the compartment in his chest.

"What the—" Brad said. "Hey! Where're you taking me? Let me outta here!"

The robot said nothing, it just walked out of the cell with Brad in its chest and started down the corridors of the ship. Brad looked out of the porthole in the ant drone's chest and started to worry. Where were they taking him this time? More importantly, _what _were they going to do with him.

That thought was eating at the back of Brad's mind just as the black ant drone stopped in front of a door. The drone leaned down and pressed an intercom button beside the door. "Chief Engineer Fixit, the prisoner you requested for is here."

'Fixit?' Brad thought, temporarily distracted from his situation by the silliness of the name. 'What kind of a name is that?' Realizing how mundane that thought was, Brad shook them out of his mind.

"Do bring him in, my good drone." Brad heard a singsong voice that had a vaguely British-sounding accent to it say.

Looking out of the porthole on the ant drone's chest, Brad saw the door open. As the ant drone stepped inside Brad swallowed a lump that suddenly materialized in his throat. Whatever the they were gonna do with or to him, they were gonna do it right here. Still looking out of the port, B rad saw that he had been brought to some kind of laboratory that looked like a mad scientist's playground. As he looked around he saw a smiling blue robot that looked like a praying mantis.

"Please release the human." The mantis robot whom Brad guessed was Fixit said. The black ant drone immediately complied by spitting Brad onto the floor.

"Ow!" Brad said as he plopped, head-first, into the floor. "Hey, watch it!"

"Thank you," Fixit said to the ant drone, waving a foreleg in a dismissive gesture. "That will be all."

The black ant drone gave a small nod and exited the lab, leaving Brad alone with the blue mantis drone. Fixit started to circle Brad, studying him intently. Brad nervously followed the robotic Chief Engineer's movement with his eyes, feeling uncomfortable under the robot's scrutiny.

"Hm, interesting." Fixit noted. "I've never had an opportunity to study humans this close before."

The blue robot shook his head. "I wonder how such inefficient collections of biological gunk could ever be considered the dominant species of planet Earth. I mean look at you! Your body is an absolutely atrocious collection of biological filth."

"Hey," Brad said, vaguely taking offense at Fixit's comments. "Who're you calling a collection of biological filth."

"Why, you, of course! There's no one else here." The Chief Engineer said, looking right at Brad. He smiled in an overly pleasant manner. "Oh well, down to business."

"W-what're you going to do with me?" Brad asked nervously.

"Well, since you probably wouldn't understand the complex processes I'm going to initiate, I'll tell you in terms that even you could understand." The blue robot said. "I'm going to attempt to reprogram your brain so that you will cooperate with Grand Marshal Yomex."

"You gonna do _what?_!" Brad said incredulously.

"Didn't understand that either?" Fixit said mockingly. "Well let me make it simpler, I'm going to warp your mind."

Brad's head was suddenly filled with images of himself with his head exploding. He gulped. "Hey, c-come on, there's no need to do that. I can play along if I have to. Besides, I'm smart enough to know I'd be an idiot not to cooperate."

"Sorry, but the Grand Marshal thinks that that's too much of a liability." Fixit said, shaking his head. "Don't worry, it won't hurt a bit. Well, at least it didn't seem to hurt XJ-9."

"What?!" Brad exclaimed. "You mean you did this to Jenny?"

"Yes, and now she is happily working with Grand Marshal Yomex." Fixit's expression contorted into a twisted smile. "And soon, so will you."

The mantis robot then picked up Brad and started to bring him over to a metal pod. Brad shouted in protest as he struggled against Fixit's hold. The Chief Engineer didn't seem to notice, he just gripped Brad like a baby. He calmly put Brad in the pod and closed it.

As the pod closed around Brad he started yelling and hitting the walls of the pod. But his trashing and protests suddenly stepped and staggered as information that felt like an electric charge surged into his mind. Brad screamed, this time in pain, as his vision went white. Fixit had been wrong. The process _did _hurt, it hurt a lot.

**Stealth Wasp, somewhere in Irken territory**

There was a slight red sheen in ADAX's vision as he crawled toward the Stealth Wasp's emergency exit hatch. It was a red sheen that appeared every time his inherent aggressiveness was kindled due to some strong emotion. The strong emotion that had kindled it this time was the fear he had felt when the Irkens had started attacking. Now he was going to use the aggressiveness that fear had sparked to strike fear into the Irkens themselves.

As he reached the hatch he looked at the weapon he affectionately called "Miffy". He made sure Miffy was set at full power before he turned his attention back to the hatch. He deftly opened the hatch with his free left hand. He activated the magnets on his feet before he squeezed out of the hatch and stepped onto the Stealth Wasp's outer hull.

His head was almost blown off as an Irken craft flashed by, guns blazing as it strafed the Stealth Wasp. The red sheen in ADAX's eyes turned even redder as he locked on to the alien vessel. It was a small, bulbous craft with a transparent bubble cockpit. Inside the cockpit he could clearly see a small, green, bug-eyed alien with insect-like antennae.

He smiled, for two reasons. One, because the Irkens looked like the old stereotyped "little green men." And two, because he pictured how funny it would be to see the Irken's craft blow up. He pointed Miffy at the alien vessel and pulled the trigger. A ball of charged ions the size ADAX's head flew from weapon and blew an engine nacelle off the alien craft. The craft spun wildly into another Irken craft and both disappeared in a satisfyingly bright ball of flame and debris. ADAX's mouth twisted into a maniacal smile at the sight.

"Two suckaz for the price of one!" he mouthed silently in the vacuum of space. The sheen in his eyes became even redder as ADAX started to fire wildly and aimlessly. He laughed a silent maniacal laugh as his aggressive nature took over. His weapons fire flew out in all directions. Some struck nothing, some were glancing blows, while some slammed into Irken vessels and either destroyed or damaged them.

"HAHAHAHAHA!!! You wanna piece of me?!" ADAX's mouthed into the silence of space, forgetting what he originally came out to do. "Come and get! Yeah, yeah, TAKE IT!!!"

[ADAX!] a stern voice suddenly came over the built-in radio in ADAX's head. [I know you must be enjoying yourself, but would you just please repair the cloaking device.]

[You are such a friggin' killjoy, Wakeman.] ADAX replied via radio. The red sheen in his vision started to ease ever so slightly. [Alright, you old witch, I'm going.]

ADAX could almost see the angry expression of Dr. Wakeman at his "old witch" remark, but she didn't reply. ADAX smirked in amusement as he walked over the hull, firing his ships that came within his line of sight. Finally, he stopped as he reached the rear portion of the Stealth Wasp. He called up the schematics he had recently downloaded and opened a panel on the ship's fuselage. Iside the panel was a damaged power relay for the Stealth Wasp's cloaking device. ADAX's left hand reconfigured into a multi-tool while he kept on shooting at the Irkens with his right hand.

He reached into the panel with his left hand. The multi-tool rapidly flew over the damaged power relay and repaired it in less than five minutes. Still opening fire at the aliens, ADAX smiled at his handiwork and called out to Mrs. Wakeman over his built-in radio.

[Okay, Wakeman,] he said over the channel. [It's fixed.]

The other Irken vessels swarmed toward the Stealth Wasp with weapons pouring wave after wave of lethal energy, but as they closed the craft disappeared. The Irken pilots, confused, started scooping the area with their scanners on full power, but there was nothing on their scopes.

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Fixit watched the pod's readouts unsurely, the brainwave patterns of the human boy within seemed more erratic than they had before. However, Fixit didn't really know how to interpret them since he hadn't been programmed to decipher such signals. He only hoped that the rapidly spiking readings on the pod's screens meant that all was going as intended.

Then, a beep sounded from the pod, signaling that the process was finished. The blue mantis robot leaned forward to study the information on the screens. On them were the words: DATA INCONCLUSIVE. The Chief Engineer frowned, even the pod's instruments were having difficulty understanding the data from the human's brainwave patterns. It seemed that he would just chance it. Fixit tapped a few keys on a control terminal.

A hissing and creaking sound came from the pod as it opened slowly. When it had opened widely enough, a human figure fell to the ground. The human moaned and clutched his head, clearly experiencing a great amount of discomfort.

"Ugh… my… head…" Fixit heard the human groan.

The blue mantis robot approached the boy. "Are you alright, human?"

The human seemed to freeze. Since Fixit wasn't programmed to read human expressions and mannerism, he didn't know what to make of the human's actions. He, instead, guessed that it probably meant that the human hadn't heard him correctly.

"Are you alright, human?" Fixit repeated.

The human turned to Fixit with expressions on his face that Fixit couldn't read. The human seemed to glare at him for a while before he started to speak. "Hey, uh, aren't I supposed to be with Jenny and that, um, Yomex guy?"

Relief flooded the Chief Engineer's subroutines. The process had worked after all, the delay in the human's reaction was probably because his brain had needed to fully absorb the information first. "Yes, human, your presence is required by Queen Jennifer." The blue mantis robot answered. "Come, I shall lead you to there."

"Lead the way." The human said. "And by the way, call me Brad. That "human" stuff is kinda insulting."

"Very well, Brad," Fixit said, nodding. "Let us go then."

As Fixit turned he didn't see Brad let out a small sigh. Nor did he see the slight smile that spread on Brad's face.

Author's Note: Hm, what's up with Brad? Is he under Cluster control or is something else afoot? And what of Dr. Wakeman and ADAX? Well, you'll have to wait for the later chapters to find out. I promise to get the next chapter out as soon as I can.


	11. A Plan

Author's Note: Thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter, they are greatly appreciated. Here's Chapter 11.

Disclaimer: Refer to prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: A Plan

**Stealth Wasp, somewhere in Irken territory**

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Dr. Wakeman asked dryly as ADAX came back to the cockpit.

ADAX raised a nonexistent eyebrow as he took a seat beside his creator. "Yeah, I did. Until you ruined it."

Mrs. Wakeman didn't reply as she fumbled for a tool. She reached inside a panel and started to resolder some loose connections. As she was doing so she accidentally brushed the soldering tool against her fingers. The doctor gave out a yelp of surprise and pain and pulled back her fingers reflexively. ADAX saw that and snickered.

"Looks like the onlu thing you've gotten over the past twelve years are shaky hands." ADAX sneered. "Well hurry it up, Wakeman. I'm getting bored sitting here, watching you tinker with the dang ship's systems."

"If you're that bored then why don't you at least lend me a hand with this." Dr. Wakeman answered testily.

"Hey, I already did my half." ADAX said as he nonchalantly put his hands behind his head. "I got the cloaking thing fixed by myself, now you fix the navigational systems by yourself."

Mrs. Wakeman shook her head in disgust. "And you wonder why I shut you down in the first place."

ADAX's head snapped up. "I don't have to wonder why you shut me down, Wakeman. I know it was because you're a perfectionist who can't stand anything less than perfect in her creations. Heck, I just have a few minor screw-ups and you toss me into the can!"

"A few _minor _screw-ups?!" Dr. Wakeman snorted. "You refused to restrain your aggressiveness and consequently caused a great deal of property damage and injuries. Why, I was lucky I wasn't incarcerated because of your antics."

ADAX spun on the doctor. "And do you know why I even have these aggressive tendencies, Wakeman? It was because _you_ made me this way in the first place! Don't you dare go and blame for not being able to control something you installed in me."

"Installed in you?! I never meant to have that simian aggressiveness assimilated into your core programming. It was an oversight that I—"

"So what you're saying is you locked me up for a mistake that _you_ made!" ADAX yelled. "A mistake that _you_ couldn't correct. A mistake that _I_ never had control over."

"No control?!" the doctor countered. "Then why did you stop firing at the aliens when I ordered you to do so? Was that not a form of control?"

"Oh this is just unbelievable!" ADAX threw his arms up. "First you say you locked me up because I couldn't control myself, now you're saying that I _do_ have control over myself?! Make up your mind, Wakeman!"

"I did not say that you couldn't, I said that you refused to control yourself." Mrs. Wakeman said. "When I found that I couldn't reprogram you I examined the recordings of your brainwave patterns during your one and only assignment. When I did I found that it was within your capability to control your aggressiveness, but you chose not to because you enjoyed it. That is why I put you in storage."

"I could've learned to control myself, Wakeman! Just like I did moments ago." ADAX said. The anger in his voice suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared. "But you never gave me a chance."

Dr. Wakeman opened her mouth to say something, but she closed them again. Finally, she said: "Well, I'm giving you the chance now."

ADAX grunted. When he spoke his voice was filled with bitterness. "Yeah, a chance that's twelve freakin' years too late!"

Mrs. Wakeman sighed. She was wasting time arguing with ADAX. She had to concentrate on repairing the navigational systems so that she could go and retrieve XJ-9. Besides, it was clear that ADAX would never understand nor forgive her for keeping him in storage. She turned her attention back to the navigational systems.

But as she started to reach for the navigational systems' circuit board, ADAX's left hand reached into the open panel. It converted to a multi-tool and started to repair the systems rapidly. Surprised, Dr. Wakeman turned to ADAX. The green robot merely gave her a blank look and a nonchalant shrug.

"You were takin' to dang long." He muttered simply as he pulled his hand back out.

The diminutive scientist looked at the navigations panel. It was completely repaired and functioning perfectly. She turned to look again at ADAX, but the robot just stared ahead and said nothing.

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Brad looked around nervously as he followed the blue mantis robot known as Fixit. He winced as his head suddenly throbbed in pain. Through the pain he saw flashes of images. Such as images of him agreeing to come with Jenny to the Cluster, images of him convincing his parents to let him go, and other images of things that he knew never happened. He knew that Fixit had probably tried to implant those images in his memories, but he had been lucky that his brain had somehow refused to accept the new data.

He knew the smart thing for him to do was to play along and convince Fixit and the other Cluster robots that what they did to him had worked. He knew that if he didn't play along he'd most likely be gotten rid of in a way he didn't even want to consider thinking about. If he played his cards right he might be able to earn enough trust to gain access to something that could help him and Jenny escape.

Brad observed his surroundings as he and Fixit walked by. All around him he saw several roach and ant drones bustling a bout the ship. Not one of them acknowledged his and Fixit's presence. They just went about their business with a mindlessly purposeful element to their actions. Brad shuddered, the drones' seemingly mindless actions reminded him of Jenny under Viruz's control.

Speaking of Jenny, what had they done to her? Was she now some mindless drone serving Yomex? Had she become a sort of a Vexus clone? Did she have anything left of her real self in her mind at all? Whatever they had done to her, he would soon find out.

Fixit stopped in front of a door and turned to Brad. "In there, hu—I mean, Brad."

Brad nodded and, forcing a smile on his face, thanked Fixit. He took a deep breath before he pushed a button that opened the door. Taking another deep breath, he stepped in. What he heard and saw upon doing so surprised him.

"I can't say this tripe!" a very familiar voice said. "I'd sound like some dork running for class president or something!"

Brad turned his head to the source of the voice. And, sure enough, it was Jenny, but not the same Jenny that he was used to seeing. Her ponytails were connected to some sort of headpiece with antennae growing out of it. Her body was also more stylized and trimmed with what looked like gold. Brad's mouth dropped. If he hadn't known better he could've sworn that it was Vexus with a new look.

"J-Jenny?!" he blurted out before he could stop himself.

Jenny turned at the sound of Brad's voice. The two robots she was talking to, a short, orange-gold one and a tall, purple one also turned to regard Brad. Jenny flashed him a smile while the two robots she had been talking to exchanged a quick, unsure glance. Jenny came over to Brad.

"Hey, Brad, glad you're finally over your jet-lag." Jenny greeted. She then seemed slightly embarrassed. "Heh heh, you're wondering 'bout the outfit, right? Believe me, it was all Yomex's and Viruz's idea."

Brad was taken aback. Jenny seemed to act like her old self, the only difference was that she seemed to think that she had willingly decided to come here. Brad remembered the images in his mind and forced himself to play along.

"Uh, hey, Jenny." Bard said. "Um, that outfit looks a little too flashy for you."

Brad mentally hit himself for the sheer stupidity that comment had sounded to him.

"I know." Jenny said, rolling her eyes. "But you haven't seen flashy and flamboyant 'til you've heard what these guys want me to say."

"Greetings, Bradley." Yomex said, looking at Brad as if to make sure he was really under his control.

"Hey, uh, Yomex. Wassup?" Brad said nervously and trying not to show it.

Fortunately for him, Yomex seemed to buy into his act. The Cluster robot spoke to him. "I was just giving Queen Jennifer her speech."

"Queen Jennifer?" Brad said, raising an eyebrow.

"It's just some dorky title they gave me." Jenny said, shrugging it off. She turned to Yomex. "Look, I am _not_ gonna spout out this hooey you wrote. If you want me to do a speech then I'm makin' my own. You wanna make this stupid declaration of secession thing, you say it yourself."

'Declaration of secession?' Brad's mind echoed, realizing what it meant. It meant that Jenny was going to be the figurehead of a rebellious faction within the Cluster, and the last thing he needed was to have his best friend piss off Vexus by leading a revolution. He had to prevent Jenny from getting even more committed into this than she already was, but how? As Jenny argued with Yomex and Viruz, Brad desperately looked around for some way out. Although deep down he knew that he most likely wouldn't find a way out of this predicament.

Then, his eyes caught sight of the back of an ant drone, a green one this time. Its off switch was exposed. He remembered how Tuck had temporarily joined with and controlled a body of an ant drone. If he could do the same he just might be able to force his way out of here. Now all he needed was a way to get him and the drone alone.

A part of his mind screamed out against the crazy plan that had just formed in his mind. Brad ignored that part. His plan might be crazy, even suicidal. But it was the only plan he got.

Author's Note: Well, that's Chapter 11. I promise to try and get the next one out as soon as possible. Though it might be somewhat delayed since school here in the Philippines starts this June 14. Anyway, please review.


	12. Rebellion

Author's Note: Hey, I'm back. Sorry it took so long for me to update this fic. I kinda had other concerns such as buying the requirements for all my classes this semester. Anyway, thanks to everyone who reviewed that last chapter. Here's Chapter 12.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Rebellion

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Brad surreptitiously took a glance around the command bridge of Grand Marshal Yomex's ship. All around him were insectoid robot drones going about their functions in a strangely coordinately and efficient manner. Brad knew that it would be stupid to try anything here. If he did, he knew that all of the drones he had observed would jump him and tear him apart before he could even utter a scream. The mere thought of that fact made his legs feel like gelatin.

"Very well, Queen Jennifer," Brad heard Yomex's voice say, snapping him out of his thoughts. "I will start off with my formal declaration of secession myself. You can make your own address to the Cluster afterwards."

Brad turned to see a very exasperated-looking Yomex facing Jenny. The look on the Grand Marshal's face actually made Brad's eyebrows arch up in surprise. To him, Yomex's expression looked exactly like Mrs. Wakeman's expression every time she and Jenny disagreed on something. It was almost funny to see that very same expression on the face of a Cluster robot.

But any humor that Brad could've derived from the situation was quickly disappeared as the full implication of what the orange-gold robot said hit him. They were gonna give their declaration of war _now. _And when Vexus herself saw Jenny presented as a figurehead for Yomex's rebellion…

Well, it wouldn't be good for his best friend.

Brad knew that he had to find a way to stop the transmission before Jenny could be introduced by Yomex as the "leader" of their rebellion, but how in the name of chum would he do that? There was no way he could stop the transmission here, not without being vaporized. And he knew too little about the layout of the ship to sneak out and find his way to the communications node to sabotage it.

He turned to look at the green ant drone he had spotted earlier. The only way he'd be able to stop the transmission was to find a way to get himself alone with the ant drone so he could use the ridiculously exposed off switch to shut down the robot then merge with its systems. Once he accomplished that he could--if he remembered Tuck's merging with the ant drone in the past correctly--get the data on the layout of the ship from the drone's memory banks. Only then could he find and sabotage the communications node.

Of course, the problem was _how _he was gonna get himself alone with the ant drone. Brad was pondering on this problem when he suddenly felt a growing pressure in his bladder. 'Oh man!' mentally moaned the boy as he realized that he hadn't gone to the toilet since he left Earth.

'I don't have time for this!' Brad thought. 'I'm stuck in the middle of a Cluster ship that's about to start a civil war! I don't have time to worry about tinkling…'

His thoughts trailed off as an idea hit him. 'Of course!' his mind shouted silently. He could use this little "call of nature" as an excuse to let him leave the bridge, and he knew that Yomex and Viruz would most likely send an escort with him since they'd be apprehensive about letting him wander around the ship alone. And knowing the thinking of Cluster robots, they'd sent a big, intimidating robot to keep him in line. In other words an ant drone.

'It's worth a shot.' Brad thought as he nervously licked his lips, steeling himself for what he was about to do.

"Hey," Brad called out, trying, and barely succeeding, to keep his voice steady and nonchalant. "Uh, can you guys tell me where the little boys room is?"

Brad gave out a nervous chuckle as he saw Yomex, Viruz, the brainwashed Jenny, and several other robots turn to look at him. "Uh," he added, still chuckling nervously. "I really need to go."

The redheaded boy saw Yomex and Viruz exchange a sort of uncertain look. He realized that it must be because there were no toilet on a ship made for robots. But he knew that they'd find a place for Brad to do his business. After all, they'd be stupid to let him "go" in the bridge.

"We don't really have toiletries, human." Viruz answered. "But we do have a waste disposal conduit in the lower level on the ship."

The High Commander turned, much to Brad's relief and elation, to the green ant drone. "423503, show this human to the waste disposal conduit."

"Yes, Sir." The drone answered. The green drone turned to Brad and said: "Come with me, please."

The drone then turned and walked out of the bridge. Brad followed, smiling a small, unseen smile. So far, so good.

But that smile disappeared as he heard Yomex speak.

"Alright, prepare the communications systems for a Cluster-wide wide transmission." Brad heard the Grand marshal say. As the door closed he managed to heard Yomex continue. "It is time we declared our intentions to the entire Cluster Empire."

**Cluster Imperial Palace, Cluster Prime**

Queen Vexus closed her eyes contentedly as she lay within her Royal Maintenance Chamber. A smile grew on her face as the maintenance tendrils of the chamber went over her systems in a systematic yet soothing manner. She let out a sigh of content as the tendrils fired jets of soothing mechanical lubricant on her robotic joints. To a machine such as her, it was bliss. Pure bliss.

But that bliss was abruptly interrupted as a call alert sounded within her chamber. The queen's eyes flew open. She gave a snarl-like growl of annoyance as she reached over towards the panel of the chamber's video intercom.

"This had better be important." Vexus said to the image on the screen in a low, menacing tone.

The image on the screen, it was of a yellow-orange roach drone, cringed at Vexus' tone of voice. It gave a quick bow and, in a fearfully quivering voice, addressed the screen. "Many apologies for the interruption, my Queen. We have just intercepted a Cluster-wide transmission that may be of great interest to you."

'A Cluster-wide transmission?' Vexus thought, frowning. She had not authorized any general transmissions to the entire Cluster Empire. "Patch it through here."

"At once, my Queen." The drone said. The roach drone's image disappeared to be replaced by a face that was very familiar to the queen.

"Yomex." Vexus hissed. Yomex had always taken particular liberties with his authority. The Cluster monarch made a mental note about severely reprimanding Yomex for the unauthorized transmission. On the screen, the image of Yomex began to speak.

"Greetings fellow robots of the Cluster Empire. I am Grand Marshal Yomex, overall commander of the great Imperial Forces of the Cluster. This transmission is addressed to all the sentient machines in the Cluster. As of today I announce the intention of me, and many other fellow machines like myself, to withdraw our support for the rule of Queen Vexus. We feel that—"

"TRAITORS!!!" Vexus screamed in fury, realizing exactly what Yomex had declared. She slammed her fist into the video intercom's screen, breaking it and thus preventing her from seeing the rest of the Grand Marshal's rebellious speech. The Cluster ruler lashed out upon the maintenance tendrils in her personal Maintenance Chamber. She tore the tendrils off the chamber walls and shredded them apart.

She had always thought Yomex to be a tad too ambitious, but she never imagined that he'd do something as overt as open rebellion. That was an oversight on her part that she would correct, harshly. She slammed her palm onto the button of the Royal Maintenance Chamber's backup intercom.

"I want Cluster Prime and all Cluster colonies put on high alert!" the queen yelled into the intercom. "And I want you to keep on playing that transmission so that you may trace it. I want Yomex found!"

The drones on the other end of the intercom scrambled to obey the queen's orders. As the "Red Alert" signal went out to ever Cluster world, Cluster Prime's artificial planetary ring started to shift slightly in shape as it released battleships from it's hidden docking bays and deployed a huge amount of weaponry on the outer rim. Meanwhile, on the inner rim of the artificial planetary ring several large panels opened up and activated a large planet-wide force field. The Cluster was going to war.

**Cluster Stealth Wasp, somewhere in Irken Territory**

Words and symols on the Stealth Wasp's panels reflected off Dr. Wakeman's glasses as the diminutive scientist leaned over the panels. The navigational systems were in full working order, thanks to ADAX, and the craft itself, despite losing an engine to alien fire, was operating well. Now the doctor only had two problems that needed to be tackled.

The first problem was the fact that the cloaking device and the wormhole generator could not be used at the same time due to power limitations. Meaning that the cloaking field had to be turned off for the Stealth Wasp to exit Irken territory. That, of course, was a detriment to both the doctor and ADAX since they were right in the middle of an Irken Armada that would jump them the minute they were visible.

The second problem was a sort of an inverse of the first one. If they somehow managed to leave Irken territory the fact that cloaking device couldn't be used together with the wormhole generator would be a bad thing, to say the least, when they exited near whatever Cluster manifestation that had captured XJ-9. Xj-9's captors would surely detect the entrance of the Stealth Wasp and, once they ascertained that the Stealth Wasp wasn't one of theirs, would surely attack it. With the ship being in the state that it was, that would make rescuing XJ-9 an utter impossibility.

"What the frig are we sittin' here for, Wakeman?" ADAX said impatiently. "Let's go already!"

Mrs. Wakeman ignored the green robot as she concentrated on solving the two problems at hand. The first problem could be chanced, but the second one definitely couldn't. Then, a thought occurred to the inventor. She reached for the jerry-rigged monitor system and typed in commands which made the machine attempt to localize XJ-9's tracking signal. The system processed the data for a moment before it finally showed the diagram of a small blip orbiting a much lager blip. Apparently, XJ-9 was being held on a, judging from the larger blips size, a small planetoid.

Dr. Wakeman pursed her lips thoughtfully. If she could plot the right exit vector she might be able to use the planetoid to mask their arrival from the Cluster ship's sensors. She carefully plotted out an exit vector before turning to the green robot beside her.

"Hang on, ADAX," she said. "This might be a tad bumpy."

"How many times do I have to say it?" ADAX said in a vaguely annoyed tone. "It's Dax, dag nab it, _Dax_!"

Mrs. Wakeman took a sharp intake of air before she turned off the cloaking device. Instantly, their ship showed up on the Irkens sensors and the little green aliens wasted no time in pursuing it. The docotor deftly made her way through the blockade of alien vessels that were all firing at the Stealth Wasp. Finally, as the Irken ships started to close in, the Stealth Wasp's wormhole generator activated. The bug-like vessel disappeared into the cosmic portal, leaving behind thousands of irked Irkens.

Author's Note: That was Chapter 12. Thanks again for all ho reviewed the last chapter, I promise to try and get the next one out sometime next week. Please review. Oh, one more thing, about the last two words of this chapter's last paragraph, the pun was not intended.


	13. Interrupted Transmission

Author's Note: Thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter, much appreciated. As promised here is chapter 13 posted a week after Chapter 12, though it is kinda rushed. I do have college and other things to worry about. Well, anyway, on with the fic!

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Interrupted Communications

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Brad followed the green green ant drone down the corridors of the Cluster ship. He couldn't make his move yet since there were other robots in the vicinity, and he knew that they wouldn't just stand by and let him do what he was planning to do without doing anything to stop him. He had to wait until he and the ant drone were alone.

He followed the robot until they entered a small, door-less compartment near the back of the ship. Inside the compartment was something that looked like a large laundry chute The ant drone gestured toward the chute. "You may relieve yourself there, human. Take care not to fall in, all matter that falls into that chute is instantly vaporized."

"Uh, thanks." Brad said. He looked around and saw that there were no other occupants inside the compartment aside from himself and the ant drone. It was the perfect time to strike. "Hey, um, could you turn around. I kinda can't go with someone watching."

A slightly perplexed look came over the drone's face before it turned around to comply with Brad's request. The moment it did so, Brad immediately flung himself at the back of the drone. The boy's hand shot out and slammed into the ludicrously exposed off switch on the drone's back. The drone's perplexed look changed into one of surprise. The surprised look stayed on the drone's face for about a second before the drone's "pupils" dilated as it shut down.

Brad leapt out of the way as the ant drone toppled over. Its green bulk slammed headfirst into a wall as it did so. The force of the impact was enough to loosen the drone's head from its body. The head clanged against the wall, flew off the green robot's torso, bounced off the ground, and smacked right into Brad's forehead. The boy gave out a yelp of pain and surprise as he was knocked over from the impact of the robot's head.

"Ow…" Brad groaned, rubbing his forehead with his right hand. He looked down and saw the decapitated drone head staring blankly at him. "Well, at least that saves me the trouble of having to pull it out myself."

Brad made his way toward the green ant drone's body. He looked doubtfully at the hole where the ant drone's head and neck used to be. Sure, he had seen his little brother, Tuck, merge with an ant drone before, but would it work for him as well? He shook his head, trying to clear it of the sudden doubt he felt. There was only one way to find out if his plan would work.

The redheaded boy took a deep breath before he tentatively started to squeeze into the opening. He squirmed feet-first into the drone's body slowly until he finally got most of his body below the neck into the drone body. What happened next occurred so fast that it disoriented Brad with its speed. He didn't even realize anything had happened until he heard a monotonous yet familiar voice say. "This mind is mostly unused, but it will be sufficient."

Initially, Brad didn't know where exactly that voice had come from. After a moment he realized that it had come from _his_ own mouth. He remembered that the very same thing had happened to Tuck when the little boy had merged with the red ant drone in the past. He remembered that Tuck's voice had changed into a monotonous warble. Brad smiled his plan had worked. He started to do a victory chant but abruptly stooped due to the fact that his mechanically augmented voice made the chant sound very strange. Besides, he had no time to waste. He had to stop Yomex's transmission.

Brad concentrated and attempted to call up the robot's memory. Suddenly, Brad's mind was staggered as new data flowed into it. After the momentary disorientation from the sudden data influx, Brad found that he could sift through the ant drone's memories. He chanced upon the schematics for the command ship's systems and studied them intently. From the schematics he saw that the communications system was decentralized, making it impossible for him to knock out communications without first going through the entire ship. Fortunately for him, the communications system drew power from a single reactor that was separate from the ship's main reactors. All he'd have to do was to destroy the reactor and the communications system would be rendered totally inoperable.

The boy reactivated the body of the ant drone and made it stand up. Using the ant drone's claws, he reached down and picked up the drone's head. He unceremoniously scrapped out the circuits inside the head and tossed them into the garbage chute. Brad poked two small, indistinct eyeholes into the now hollow drone head before he placed it over his own head. His disguise completed, he walked out of the compartment and made his way toward the communication's systems' reactor.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Viruz smiled as he listened to Yomex's speech. It had begun, it had finally begun! Soon their forces would topple Vexus reign and Queen Jennifer, under Yomex's subtle but sure control, would rule the Cluster. Under the command of Yomex's puppet queen, the Cluster would go forth and conquer the galaxy, and the galaxy after that, and another galaxy until the whole universe would bow to Cluster might. But more importantly, at least to Viruz, he would have his revenge on Queen Vexus for refusing to mass-produce him all because of an accidental misfiring caused by an internal malfunction. At the thought of vengeance, the High Commander's smiled became wider.

He turned to XJ-9, their rebellion's figurehead. It had almost been amusing to watch her reprogrammed persona playing right into their plans. He'd had to stop himself repeated from laughing as he watched XJ-9 act out the part unwittingly. Another part of him almost pitied the robot girl. But "almost" pitying was far from truly pitying her. She was just, after all, nothing but a pawn in their rebellion, a tool to be used.

"Communications are out!" a roach drone suddenly shouted, snapping Viruz out of his musings.

"What?!" Yomex demanded.

"The communications systems' lost power, I don't know why." Reported the drone.

"Well, find out why!" Viruz roared.

"What's going on?" XJ-9 asked, a puzzled expression on her face.

"Just a slight setback, Queen Jennifer," Yomex said reassuringly. "I'm sure the problem will be remedied soon enough."

"The communications systems' power core has been destroyed," A red roach drone reported. He turned to Yomex and Viruz. "By ant drone 423503."

"That's the drone Brad was with!" Jenny exclaimed with alarm. She bolted for the door before Yomex and Viruz could stop her. Yomex turned to Viruz.

"Go after her. Whatever happened, I'm sure that human boy had something to do with it. I knew he was acting suspiciously." Viruz nodded curtly and quickly went after Jenny. Yomex turned back to the red roach drone. "Get Fixit here, at once!"

**Cluster Imperial Palace Strategic Center, Cluster Prime**

The yellow roach drone in charge of the Cluster Imperial Palace Strategic Center looked on nervously as the computers attempted to trace the transmission from Yomex's vessel. The tracers were getting closer to finding the source of the transmission, but the heavy signal masking of the transmission made it very hard to triangulate the source quickly. Suddenly, the transmission ended.

"What the—" blurted out the yellow drone. "What happened?"

"The transmission stopped." A red roach drone replied.

"Did you get vector for the source?"

"No, we were getting closer but it stopped to soon for us to finish tracing it."

Had the roach drone been created with sweat glands he would've started to sweat profusely. Queen Vexus would not be happy about this. And he knew all too well what happened when the Queen was unhappy. The robotic yellow roach gulped and looked around the strategic center. At his glance the other drones quickly looked away, signaling the fact that none of them would volunteer to give Vexus the bad news. Looks like he was gonna have to do it himself. He just hoped that he wouldn't end up like all the other bearers of bad news. Trenbling, the yellow robot turned and exited the strategic center.

As he exited he heard one of the other roach drones remark: "Dead drone walking."

**Cluster Command Cruiser of Assault Group 16, somewhere close to Cluster Prime**

Group Commander Gladius, a Smitus-type command robot, listened intently to the transmission from Grand Marshal Yomex's ship. Waiting for the transmission to end and thus signal his Assault Group and other groups like his to attack Cluster Prime. Then, the transmission abruptly ended. A part of him was surprised since Yomex usually ended his transmissions with a formal sign-off. But he brushed those thoughts aside. He had to attack.

"Okay boys, the transmission's ended." He said to his crew. "Prepare to wormhole jump."

"Sir, incoming transmission from Group Commander Siberius." A roach drone reported.

Gladius grimaced in distaste, Siberius was the commander of his groups partner group, Assault Group 15. Siberius was known for being careful, too careful for Gladius' tastes. "Put him through."

The face of another Smitus-type robot appeared on the communications screen. "Gladius! I'm glad I got to you. Don't attack, I think something's wrong. The Grand Marshal always finishes his transmissions with a—"

Gladius waved his hand in annoyance. "I think that you think too much, Siberius. I, Group Commander Gladius, commander of Assault Group 16, destroyer of enemy ships, scourge of enemy fleets, and master of space combat will not waste my time dithering around while there is a battle to fight!"

"But—" Siberius began, but Gladius cut their communications. He ordered his Assault Group to jump, leaving behind his partner assault group.

But Assault Groups 16 and 15 weren't the only ones. The scene repeated itself among many of Yomex's assault groups. The more careful commanders sensed something amiss and opted to stay behind while the more brash commanders drove headlong into Cluster Prime. As a result, what would have been a perfect planetary bombardment force ended up with many gaps in their positions. Gaps Cluster prime's defenses took advantage of.

Taking Cluster Prime would not be as easy as Yomex and Viruz had envisioned.

**Cluster Stealth Wasp**

Dr. Wakeman checked the displays on the craft's panels. Only a few more minutes 'til they exited the wormhole. She moved her hand close to the cloaking system's controls. The planetoid should mask their arrival, but it was prudent to activate it as quickly as she possibly could. The faster they were invisible, the better their chances to sneak in unnoticed.

"Get ready," she said to ADAX. "If we exit wrongly it might get very, very rough for us."

ADAX snorted. "Rough? We just took on an entire alien armada, and you know how that turned out."

"Yes, we barely got out alive." Mrs. Wakeman said sardonically.

"Hey," ADAX said. "At least we gave 'em a good hiney whuppin'."

"Yes, right after they gave us a worse 'whupping'." The doctor quipped.

ADAX was opening his mouth to say something when the Stealth Wasp suddenly exited the wormhole. The instant the wormhole closed, Dr. Wakeman flipped on the cloaking device. As the ship turned invisible, Mrs. Wakeman looked at the craft's threat receiver. She sighed in relief, their entrance had gone unnoticed. She turned the Stealth Wasp tpward the direction the monitors showed XJ-9 was. As she rounded the planetoid, a small, squarish vessel came into view. The monitor showed that XJ-9 was inside it. The doctor gritted her teeth and headed straight for the Cluster ship.

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. I promise to update as fast as I can. Please review.


	14. This Was It

Author's Note: Thank you to all who read this fic and reviewed the last chapter. Sorry I've let this fic hang for as long as it did, I was busy studying for the pre-midterm exams. Man, am I glad they're over. Anyway, here's Chapter 14.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: This Was It

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

"Oh, yeah!" Brad droned out in a mechanically modulated voice. "I am the man!"

He turned to observe the broken remains of the communications systems' power reactor and the hacked-up roach drone parts strewn all around the reactor room's floor. He grinned and clicked the claws of his commandeered ant drone body excitedly. He had always wondered how it felt like to kick some serious hiney like Jenny did, but he had been limited to imaginations and daydreaming. Well, at least until now.

Suddenly, more roach drones poured inside the reactor room, weapons drawn. They fired at Brad who merely laughed as the pieces of the ant drone body he was wearing simply flew back and reattached themselves every time they got blown off by the weapons fire of the roach drones. He smirked confidently as he leaned over and simply swept away the roach drones with the strength of his ant drone body. Many of the drones flew into either the walls or each other and ended up as heaps of junk.

"Wohoo!" Brad yelled happily. "I rock!"

It was then that a shot from a roach drone's beam cannon glanced off the hollowed-out ant drone head that Brad wore over his head. Brad was unhurt, but the ant drone head flew off his own head from the force of the shot. The smile on Brad's face disappeared. The ant drone's body may be self-repairing, but _he_ certainly wasn't. He turned to the two remaining roach drones in the reactor room.

"Hey," a red roach drone exclaimed. "I didn't know 423503 had a second head, and a funny-lookin' one too."

"Funny looking?" Brad said, offended. Though he quickly realized how stupid it was for him to be offended in this particular situation.

The green roach drone standing right beside the red roach drone reached over with its arm and smacked the red drone on the head. "Idiot! That's the human, and he's using 423503's body!"

"Oh." The red drone blinked. "Well, that's good."

"Good?!" demanded the green drone. "How can something like this be good?!"

"Now I don't have to give 423503 the can of WD40 that I owe 'im."

The sheer absurdity of the red drone's comments actually had Brad taken aback for a second, but he quickly shrugged it away and tore the two remaining roach drones apart with his ant drone claws. Both roach drones fell to pieces. The disembodied head of the green drone whirred and sparked as it spoke to the disembodied head of the red drone.

"This is your fault…" it muttered.

"M-my fault?!" the red drone's head managed to say before the light in its eyes turned off, signaling that its systems completely shut down.

"You d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-distracted me—" the green drone's head managed to sputter out before shutting down.

"Well, that was kinda funny. In a weird way." Brad said as he looked at the remains of the drones. "Okay, now to go and get Jenny and find a way to escape."

The redheaded boy sprinted out of the reactor room, going off to find his best friend. He didn't need look far. At that very moment Jenny literally ran right into him, sending both of them flying backward. Brad staggered to his feet, rubbing the back of his head in pain. Jenny, however, jumped to her feet and deployed her arm-mounted laser cannon.

"Okay, ant bot, what've you done with—" Jenny started to say before she looked closely at the green ant drone's head. "BRAD?!"

Brad gulped nervously as he got up. He knew Jenny was still under the rebellion's control, and the last thing he wanted was to fight with his best friend. Especially if that best friend was a super-powered robot that made action stars look like thumb-sucking babies.

"I know you can hear me in there, Brad." Jenny said. "Don't worry, I'll find a way to get you off that ant drone body. This doofus is probably one of Vexus' spies sent here to stop Yomex's noble cause. And now he's got you hostage."

"Huh?" Brad blurted out before he realized that jenny must think that it had been the ant drone whom had forced him to merge with it, and not the other way around. "Hey, Jenny, you got it all wrong. First of all, if this ant drone's got me hostage, then why is my head in the place of its head. And secondly, you've been reprogrammed, Jenny. You never agreed to work with Yomex."

"Don't try to pull that on me, you Vexus lackey." Jenny warned. "I know you put Brad in that position just so I won't dare shoot you. Well that's fine, I have other ways to deal with you."

With that, jenny un-deployed her lasers and activated her Power Fists. She charged at Brad and his ant drone body. She started to take wild swings at Brad's ant drone body with her oversized fists, being very careful so as not to hit brad himself. Brad, in the meantime, did his best to block Jenny's blows with the strong arms of the ant drone's body. But he knew that his borrowed robotic body wasn't gonna last long against Jenny.

"Listen, Jen," he panted, already starting to experience great difficulty against the ferocity of Jenny's attacks. "It really is me in control here, and I've told you the truth. Yomex, Viruz, and that Fixit guy messed with your head to make you think that you volunteered to come here, but you didn't. They really captured you and brought you and brought you here."

"Shut up," Jenny snapped. "The only thing here that's gonna get messed up here is you. Now stop trying to talk with Brad's voice, it just ain't convincing."

"Oh, this is just freakin' great," Brad groaned as he continued with his struggled to block Jenny's attacks. "Please, Jenny, just listen to me. I really don't wanna hurt you."

But Jenny didn't listen. Her reprogrammed brain was fully convinced that it wasn't really Brad who was talking, but a spy sent by Vexus to sabotage Yomex's rebellion. A rebellion that she had been reprogrammed to think that she had voluntarily offered to participate in. She gave powerful kick to one side of the ant drone body that made it spin, exposing the off switch on its back. But before she could reach for it, Brad turned and blocked her hand with his ant drone arm.

Brad's mind, on the other hand, was racing. The last attempt by Jenny had nearly succeeded in turning the ant drone body off. He knew that if his ant drone body was shut down he'd his chances of escaping would go down from slim to nada. Like it or not, he'd have to hit back and take Jenny with him by force. And because she was still under her reprogrammed mind's whims, she clearlyu wouldn't be convinced to come with him. No matter how hard he tried to convince her otherwise. He sighed.

"Sorry, Jenny." Brad mumbled. He chewed the bottom of his lip as he pulled back one of the ant drone's arms and punched his robotic best pal right in the abdomen.

  
"Oomph!" Jenny grunted, more from surprise than from pain. She flew right into a power relay connected to the ship's main reactor. She slammed into the relay and screamed as several gigawatts of energy flowed through her body. Her smoking body clattered to the floor and didn't move.

"Oh, cripes!" Brad cried out in alarm. He hadn't meant for _that _to happen. He ran to the unmoving form of his best friend. He leaned down and started to shake Jenny gently, trying to wake her up.

"Jenny, oh geez, I'm so sorry!" Brad said, his tone become frantic.

"Yes," a voice said behind Brad. The boy stiffened. It was an all too familiar Cryptkeeper-like voice. "You will be very sorry indeed, Bradley."

Brad turned slowly, afraid to look at the source of the voice. Finally, the voice's source came into view. It was the tall and lanky purple robot High Commander, Viruz. The High Commander glared right at Brad, grinning menacingly.

**Cluster Imperial Palace, Cluster Prime**

"Please, would you say that again." Vexus cooed in a gentle tone to a trembling yellow roach drone.

The drone gulped, seeing the underlying danger in the queen's demeanor. "W-we lost the t-transmission from Y-yomex bef-f-fore we managed to t-track him down, my Queen."

"Lost?" Vexus asked, still using the same overly gentle voice. "Now how could you lose something like a transmission? You didn't misplace it somewhere, did you?"

"Ap-p-parently the Grand Marshal cut his transm-mission short." The yellow drone said in a quivering voice. He cringed even more now, half-expecting the queen to cut him into tiny pieces. Her Majesty was known to do that when presented with information that she didn't particularly like to hear.

However, Vexus just sat on her throne and pondered on what the drone had told her. It was most unlike Yomex to leave a transmission uncompleted. All his transmissions always ended with a formal sign-off, and the fact that he didn't do so led her to think that something was amiss in the Grand marshal's camp. She pressed a button on her throne's armrest, deploying a large tactical screen. What she saw on the screen confirmed her suspicions.

There were many large gaps in the formations of the attacking forces, large gaps that severely happered the attacking groups' ability to fight. Normally, an attack formulated by the Grand Marshal would have had every angle covered. She had seen records of Yomex's past campaigns, and those had earned her grudging respect for their efficiency and effectiveness. But what she saw almost made her think that it was someone else's attack fleet, not Yomex's.

But as she looked more closely, she saw signs of Yomex's hand in the attack. While their formations had many gaps, the attacking ships were still doing a lot of damage thanks to the precision of their flight formations and weapons fire. Precision that was evident in ships trained by Yomex himself. Several sectors in Cluster Prime's main defensive structure, the artificial planetary ring, had taken heavy damaged and were in danger of shutting down, a testament to the effectiveness of the attacks. Still, it would take more than that to bring down the Cluster Empire's capital planet to its proverbial knees, especially with all the large gaps in the attack formations that got even larger as ship after ship were wiped out.

"Well, well, looks like even you are not immune to unforeseen circumstances that hamper an operations chances for success, Yomex." Vexus said to herself. She smiled and turned to the cringing drone. "Return to the Tactical Center and try to see if you can find any sign of Yomex within communications range of Cluster Prime."

The yellow roach drone looked up and blinked. He had half expected Vexus to destroy him in a fit of blind rage, but to his fortunate surprise the queen actually sounded happy. He shook those thoughts out of his mind. He'd better get out before the queen's generous mood changed.

"At once, Your Highness." The yellow drone said before quickly turning and running as fast as he could out of the throne room. Internally, he was laughing and thanking his lucky stars. He had survived bringing bad news to the queen, and that was no small thing.

**Cluster Stealth Wasp**

ADAX tapped his fingers on Miffy, his weapon, expectantly. Out the view port he saw the deceptively small, boxy Cluster command vessel steadily increasing its size as the Stealth Wasp drew closer. Beside him, Dr. Wakeman gritted her teeth in intense concentration as she maneuvered their still cloaked craft closer to the Cluster ship that was slowly orbiting a small planetoid. ADAX clicked his metal tongue in barely concealed anticipation.

"It's almost show time." He said to no one in particular.

Mrs. Wakeman slowed the Stealth Wasp down as they came within 500 meters of the cluster ship. The ship didn't seem to have detected them yet, and she wanted it to remain that way. Slowly, almost ponderously, the captured Cluster stealth craft flipped over and came belly-to-belly with the Cluster ship. The artificial gravity in the cockpit kept ADAX and Nora "upright" as the Wasp's "legs" latched magnetically onto the underside of the larger Cluster vessel.

The doctor let out a long breath. She turned to the green robot beside her and nodded. This was it.

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now, folks. I promise to get the next chapter up as soon as I possibly can. Please review and thanks in advance.


	15. Payback Time

Author's Note: Thanks you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, much appreciated. Here's Chapter 15.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Payback Time

**Outside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

"Come on, Wakeman," ADAX said impatiently. "Let's go already! I wanna see some action."

"Be patient, ADAX. I still need to find a subtle way for us to enter the ship." Dr. Wakeman said as she studied the schematics of Yomex's ship shown in the Stealth Wasp's databank. "Hm, no large main air vents to use for entry, only small air circulation pipes which are activated when oxygen-breathing organisms are taken aboard. Too small for use as entry points…"

ADAX grew even more impatient as he watched Mrs. Wakeman look over the schematics. He grumbled as he turned to the doctor. "Hurry it up, old timer. I ain't got all day!"

"Please, ADAX," she replied, annoyed. "I'm going as fast as I can. We can't just barge in there with force, we should enter and rescue XJ-9 and Bradley as subtly as possible. It gives us a greater chance of success."

"Subtle-schumtle," the green robot mumbled. "I say we blast our way in and tear our way out. It's always worked for me before."

"Need I remind you that the last time you employed that technique I had to lock you up for 12 years." The doctor shot back.

ADAX opened his mouth as if to say something, but he quickly closed it, folded his arms, and started grumbling in his seat. He shot a look at the panel Dr. Wakeman was studying. As Nora scrolled through the displays, something caught ADAX's eyes. He wordlessly brushed aside his creator and started to scroll back the displays until he found what had caught his eyes. He turned triumphantly to the annoyed scientist beside him.

"ADAX, was there any particular reason why you so rudely commandeered the display panel?" Mrs. Wakeman asked.

"Yeah," ADAX said, smirking. "I just found us a way in."

He jerked his thumb toward the screen. Dr. Wakeman turned to look. As she did, she frowned. "But that's a heat vent. It siphons out the collective excess heat from the entire ship making it very, very hot, about 1500F to be precise. Far to hot for us to use as a means of entry."

"Wrong, Wakeman," ADAX said. "It's not too hot for _us,_ it's too hot for _you,_ that kind of heat is nuthin' to me. Besides, there's one of the heat vent's pipes right below us. All you'd have to do extent that entry tube on the bottom of this craft to the hull and let me cut into the vent itself. Quick and easy access, plus it's subtle. That should make you happy"

"But that would mean that you'd have to go in alone." Mrs. Wakeman prostested. "And I can't let a robot as irresponsible and reckless as you go by yourself."

"Hey!" ADAX jerked a finger at the scientist. "I thought you said you were givin' me a chance. Well here's a chance for me to prove to you that I can do my job, and I will. If you give me the chance."

Dr. Wakeman looked at ADAX's face and saw the determination in his expression. It wasn't exactly the crazed, brazen, trigger-happy look she had expected, but still… "Very well, but how would you get Bradley out? I doubt he can survive being dragged through the pipes with that kind of heat."

"I'll just blow up the heat ventilation system's central control node on the way out." ADAX replied. "That should shut it down."

Mrs. Wakeman looked at the green robot for a moment, deciding whether or not she should go with his plan. After a short while she sighed, she reached over to a control panel and pressed a button. There was a slight shudder that ran through the Stealth Wasp as an entry tube extended from it's bottom and magnetically latched itself onto the hull of the command ship.

"Thanks, Wakeman." ADAX said, giving his maker a confident smile. "Don't worry, I'll get the job done. If you can count on anything you can count on that."

With that, he gave Dr. Wakeman a small salute with his weapon and made his way toward the entry tube.

**Inside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Brad took an involuntary step back as Viruz slowly moved towards him. He swallowed the lump that had formed on his throat as he kept his eyes on the tall purple robot. He remembered how effortlessly Viruz had defeated Jenny on their first encounter, and he knew that his chances of beating the High Commander were zilch. But as he took a look at the still unconscious form of Jenny, he knew that he had to at least try fighting Viruz. It was what Jenny would do if she was in his place, and even if he wasn't a superhero robot he could do no less. Gritting his teeth, Brad made the ant drone body he had commandeered fall into a fighting stance.

"That looks a lot like fighting stance, most amusing." Viruz sneered mockingly. "Do you really think you can take me on? That's a laugh!"

"Y-yeah?" Brad said nervously. "Well, we'll see about that."

"Yes, we certainly will." Viruz smirked confidently. He raised a nonexistent eyebrow as he took a look around at the damage Brad had done. "Still, I must commend you for doing as much as you did. You did, after all, manage to fool us, steal 423503's body, defeat all those roach drones, and knock XJ-9 out with one lucky blow. Not bad for human."

Viruz smiled as energy started to flow down the lines that ran along his body. "Not bad, but not good enough to face me."

At that instant Viruz formed a ball of purple energy and flung it right at Brad. The boy, whose senses and reflexes were heightened by the ant drone body's sensor arrays, managed to leap out of the way of Viruz's blast. Not even stopping to slow down, Brad lunged for the High Commander. But the purple robot's reflexes were faster, he merely sidestepped to avoid Brad's attack and calmly slammed his hand down on the ant drone body's off switch as Brad overshot past him.

Viruz snorted in contempt. "Too easy, it's as if I was battling a wind-up toy."

The deactivated ant drone body of Brad seemed to hang in mid-lunge for a moment before it finally toppled to the ground. The impact caused Brad to slip right out of the body. The boy scrambled to pick himself up and quickly started to fearfully back away from Viruz. Seeing the human boy's fear the High Commander beamed with malicious glee.

"Oh, man." Brad moaned. "This is not good."

"I'd give you to Fixit for another brainwashing, but seeing how that worked the first time I think I should just destroy you." Viruz grinned as the purple energy receded from the lines on his body. "Don't worry, we'll make sure that XJ-9 doesn't miss you. All memory of you will be wiped from Queen Jennifer's memory banks."

Brad gulped and started quivering involuntarily as Viruz started flexing his long, blade-like fingers.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From another part of the ship, an orange-gold robot watched the unfolding scene from a security monitor. The orange-gold robot turned to a blue mantis-like robot that stood right beside him.

"That human child wouldn't have done as much damage as he did if only you'd have done your job right." Yomex said.

"B-but Sir, you have to understand." Fixit stuttered. "My equipment was built to reprogram machines, not biologicals. Furthermore, I was not built to judge human behavior and facial expressions so I couldn't really tell that that boy was only putting on a charade."

Yomex turned to him and narrowed his eyes. "You should have made sure."

"But…" Fixit began in protest, but then he stopped and sighed. "Yes, Grand Marshal, I should have."

"Well, what's done is done." The Grand Marshal conceded. "Viruz will soon get rid of that bag of biological filth, and after he does I want every trace of that human's existence wiped from Queen Jennifer's mind. Is that clear?"

The Chief Engineer nodded respectfully. "Yes, Sir."

"Good." The Grand Marshal said. "Now just sit back and enjoy the show. I'm sure Viruz will find an entertaining way to rid us of that human."

Yomex then turned to a gaggle of roach drones. "Send a repair team down there at once. I want our communications back on line as soon as possible."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

SYSTEMS OVERLOADED

REBOOTING…

LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM…

OS LOADED, INSTALLING DEFAULT SETTINGS

Jenny opened her eyes slowly, she swept them around the room and took in her surroundings. She was, to say the least, confused after the shock she had received. What had happened? Where was she? What was she doing here? No answers came to her as her systems slowly rebooted. Suddenly, movement caught the corner of her eyes. She turned groggily and saw a redheaded human boy backing away from a really tall purple robot.

At first, she didn't recognize them, but them everything in her memory flooded back to her. She suddenly remembered who Brad, Viruz, Yomex, and Fixit were. She remembered what the latter three had done to her. They had captured her and messed with her mind then played her like a puppet. They had _used_ her. At the realization, she felt her anger starting to rise within her.

She shot a look at Viruz. The High Commander who had violated her mind and mocked her when he had taken control. She clenched her fists. He was gonna make him pay, and after that she was gonna make Yomex and Fixit pay. Yes, all of them were going to pay dearly for what they had done to her.

As Viruz slinked menacingly toward Brad, Jenny slowly got to her feet, unnoticed by the High Commander. It was payback time.

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. I promise to try and get the next chapter out as soon as I can.


	16. Bring It On

Author's Note: Yeesh, it's taking me over a week to update my fics. I'm sorry, readers, but college was just too demanding last week in academic terms and I couldn't find the free time to update my fic. Oh well, enough with the excuses. On with Chapter 16!

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Bring It On

**Inside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Brad felt himself back into a wall. As the cold metal surface of the wall brushed against his back, he shut his eyes tight and started to tremble. It was over, Viruz was gonna tear him apart and there was nothing he could do but let him. Begging and fighting back wouldn't help, that's for sure. He opened his eyes slowly and looked at Viruz, the High Commander was looking at him the same way a cat looked at a cornered mouse. 'Well,' Brad thought. 'At least I tried. I'm sorry I couldn't get you out of here, Jenny.

At the thought of his best friend, Brad turned to where he had seen Jenny lie unconscious. He had hoped to catch one last glance of his best pal before he was sliced apart. But instead of the unmoving robot girl he had expected to see, he instead saw Jenny silently bringing her arms together, preparing to deploy a weapon. Before she brought her arms together she brought a finger in front of her mouth and made a gesture telling him to keep quiet. Brad smiled, from the way Jenny was acting he could tell that she was back to normal. Ever so slightly, he nodded.

"Hey, purple dude," Brad said, hoping to distract the purple robot. "You might wanna take a look behind you."

As Brad expected, Viruz snorted unbelievingly. "Please, human, do you really think I'd fall for such a pathetic ploy?"

Brad took another look at Jenny. She had already deployed her arms into a large cannon and was silently gesturing Brad to duck down. Brad smirked, with Viruz's energy fields shut off he'd be very vulnerable to Jenny's attack. Brad winked slowly at Jenny then turned back to face Viruz.

"Nah, I really didn't think you'd fall for that. Just as I'd expected."

A look of bewilderment had just passed Viruz face at Brad's words when the boy suddenly dove to the ground. Seeing Brad duck, Jenny fired her weapon on full blast. The antimatter beam lanced toward the High Commander and struck his right shoulder blade. Viruz managed to let out a scream of pain and surprise a split second before the violent explosion sent him flying. As Viruz was thrown from the force of explosion he managed to catch a glimpse of Jenny, who was grinning in fierce satisfaction. At that moment he realized that Jenny was no longer under the rebellion's control.

Viruz plopped hard into a wall. He picked himself up and looked down at his body. His right arm and half of his right upper torso was gone. There was nothing left except a large, smoking hole. The purple robot turned to his attacker, his face a mask of sheer fury.

"YOU!" Viruz yelled, his voice heavily distorted by anger. "I'll destroy you for this! I don't care about your propaganda value, I'LL TEAR YOU TO PIECES FOR THIS!!!"

The tall, purple robot stood up fully. He glowed an intense shade of purple as tendrils of angry, lightning-like energy started to cover his body. He stared balefully at Jenny as he increased his energy levels to heights he had never reached before. He pointed his remaining arm at Jenny, preparing to blast her out of existence.

All Jenny did was smirk. She wasn't the least bit intimidated by Viruz's show of power. All she cared about was the fact that she had hurt Viruz, bad. Just one little deposit before she paid him back in full for how he had violated her mind. She calmly pointed her weapon and him and sneered. "Bring it on, Viruz. I'm ready to take you on!"

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"This is not good." Yomex muttered to himself as he watched Viruz and jenny square off through the security monitor. He had to stop Viruz from destroying XJ-9, she was too valuable a propaganda tool. But in Viruz angered state, he knew that verbal pleas for him to stop would be useless. He'd have to restrain him physically in order to prevent him from turning XJ-9 into a pool of molten metal.

He stood up and turned to his bridge crew. "Once communications are restored you must try to coordinate our forces the best you that you can. I must go and handle this little problem."

"Yes, Sir." All the roach drones in his bridge crew answered collectively.

Yomex just gave a curt nod before he turned and quickly exited the control bridge.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

ADAX set his weapon to cutting-laser mode and turned it to the section of the Cluster command ship's hull the Stealth Wasp's entry tube encompassed. He pulled the trigger and quickly cut a large, circular hole into the hull. Immediately, he felt a blast off heat. Apparently, he had cut right into the thermal ventilation pipe that lay under the hull. It was all well and good since that was what he had planned to do.

The green robot set his weapon to attack mode as he crawled into the hole. He landed in the heat vent and started to look around. All around him the walls of the vent glowed bright red from temperatures that would've reduced a human body to charcoal in seconds. But ADAX just shrugged, other than the fact that his sensors detected a rise in external temperature, the heat was of no discomfort to him at all.

"Well, Miffy," ADAX said to his weapon. "Let's get going."

ADAX mentally called up the ship schematics he had downloaded from the Stealth Wasp before making his way down the pipes. First, he had to blow up the thermal vent's central control node turn down the heat so that the human he had to rescue wouldn't get fried when they had to crawl out of the ship through the heat vent. ADAX sighed, it was simple enough to find the control node & blow it up, especially since he had downloaded the ship's schematics. Still, it would be a long tedious crawl from the spot he currently was.

"Oh well," ADAX said to his weapon again. "At least we'll most likely see some action after we blow up the control node."

He turned to the direction that the schematics said the thermal control node was and started to crawl forward. A few minutes into the crawl, his mind started to rebel. A small, even more impetuous version of his voice started to nag in the back of his mind.

'Dump this subtle tripe,' it said. 'Just blast yourself outta here, grab your sister and her friend, then blast your way out. This sneaking around stuff is just freakin' boring!'

ADAX almost agreed and instinctively started to point Miffy at the pipe walls, preparing to blast a hole in them. But he managed to stop himself. As much as he hated it, he was going to have to follow Wakeman's suggestion for subtlety if he wanted to succeed. That was the only way he could prove to Wakeman that he wasn't a big failure. And the only way to be sure that he kept his newly restored freedom.

The voice in his head chuckled. 'Never thought I'd see the day you took Wakeman's orders seriously.'

'Never thought I'd see the day Wakeman'd let me out of the pod either.' ADAX mentally retorted.

'Oh, come on! Don't tell me you actually feel _obligated?_ You, ADAX? Obligated?'

'No, I just wanna prove that I'm no failure, and to make sure I stay free.'

'You ain't got nuthin' to prove to nobody, man!' the voice insisted. 'Besides, your free already. If you wanna make sure you stay free just hold Miffy to Wakeman's head and force her to take you back to Earth.'

'You know,' ADAX replied. 'I just realized that I'm talkin' to myself, and that I'm really annoying!'

'Why, thank you.'

'Yeah, well, you could talk all you want 'cause I ain't answering you anymore. So you could just blabber in my head all you want and it'd do no good, or you can shut up.'

'Spoilsport.' The voice head said, but after that it kept silent.

ADAX shook his head. Voices in his head? Talking to himself? Was he going nuts? But then he remembered that he had been considered nuts way before he had gotten into this mess. So he probably shouldn't have been so surprised to have had heard voices in his head or to have had held a conversation in his head. It was, after all, part of being crazy. And he was crazier that most. With that thought, he continued down the heat vent.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"RAAAHHH!!!" Viruz roared as he flung an immense of destructive purple energy at Jenny. Jenny fired her antimatter beam right at the approaching fork of energy. The two pillars of energy met and detonated in a massive explosion that shook the walls and threw Brad, Jenny, and Viruz backwards.

"Yeouch!" Brad cried, rubbing his backside in pain.

"Get out of here, Brad." Jenny said, realizing how dangerous her fight with Viruz was to Brad. "You could really get hurt."

"Funny, I recalled the fact that I could seriously get hurt in football," Brad said. "Yet you not only didn't tell to get out of the team, it was you who coerced me into it in the first place."

"Brad! I'm serious!" Jenny said.

"Yeah?" Brad said. "Well me too, Jenny. We're in this together and we get out of this together. Besides, even if I did get out now where'll I go?"

Jenny made a frustrated-sounding noise. "Brad, I appreciate the gesture and all, but—"

"Aw, now isn't this a touching friendship," Viruz sneered, interrupting Jenny. "Don't worry, Bradley. I'll make sure that you and your best friend will be annihilated together!"

Viruz jumped, blade-like fingers extended forward. Brad and Jenny leapt to the side as Viruz landed. The energy-covered, blade-like fingers of the High Commander dug into the floor, melting a hole in it. Jenny spun around, aiming her antimatter cannon at Viruz. But the purple robot whirled and swiped at the weapon, damaging it.

Jenny gritted her teeth as she split apart the damaged antimatter cannon and un-deployed it into her arms. She quickly jumped back and deployed her arm lasers, firing shot after shot at the High Commander. Viruz leapt again for Jenny, the teenage robot's shots glancing harmlessly off his energy-covered body.

Jenny jumped out of the way, but she wasn't as quick as the last time. The tip of one of Viruz's blade-like fingers grazed against her leg, gouging out a molten tear in Jenny's leg armor. Jenny winced at the damage as Viruz flew past. His energy-covered form slamming into a wall and melting right through it.

"Urgh." Jenny grunted as she landed next to Brad.

The redhead looked at the hole Viruz made in the wall for a moment. A smile crept to his face as an idea formed in his head. He bent down to face Jenny. "Jenny, I can stop Viruz."

"What?!" Jenny said incredulously, not believing that Brad actually said what he said. "Brad, did you hit your head on something really hard? How can you stop Viruz when even I'm having trouble trying to hold him back?"

"Jen, just trust me, okay? I got a plan." Brad whispered. "There's this waste disposal conduit that I went to somewhere in this ship. If we can lead Viruz there we could trick him into running right into the conduit's door. He'll melt through it a fall right into the waste disposal system."

"How's that gonna help?" Jenny asked. "He could just climb back up."

"No, before I took control of the ant drone he told me that anything that goes into the waste disposal is disintegrated. If Viruz falls in, he'll be vaporized."

"Ant dorne told… took control… wha?" Jenny said, thoroughly confused. Apparently, she still didn't remember exactly how she and Brad had fought.

"Look, I'll explain everything later," Brad said. He looked at the hole in the wall where Viruz was starting to emerge. "Just follow my plan, okay?"

Jenny looked skeptically at Brad for a moment. Finally, she sighed in acceptance. "I guess it's worth a shot. What've I got to lose?"

With that, Jenny picked up Brad and activated her ponytail boosters. Still carrying Brad, she flew down the corridors. In hot pursuit was Viruz, screaming an angry battle cry as he followed the two.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

ADAX continued down the thermal vent, oblivious to the predicament the ones he was supposed to rescue were in. He called up the schematics in his mind again, hoping to find that the control node was near. Unfortunately for him, it was still about three levels away. Grumbling to himself, ADAX went on his way. All the crawling around was starting to make him frustrated. He had to alleviate some of the frustration, it could build up and turn into anger. And he knew all too well his problems with that particular emotion.

In an attempt to ease off some of his frustration ADAX banged the pipe wall with his right hand, the same hand that held Miffy. A very bad move since Miffy's safety was off and its trigger was very sensitive, it fired on full power into a section of the heat vent's wall. ADAX yelled in surprise as the vent wall buckled from the explosion. The green robot fell on his back as the shock passed through the entire section of the thermal vent.

ADAX stared at the damage he caused and started to scream and curse in anger. He slammed his free hand on the pipe, hard. In fact, it was hard enough to loosen the severely damaged section of pipe. The pipe lurched downward, causing ADAX to slide down to a newly formed rift in the vent. He fell and landed right in front of a short orange-gold robot.

The orange-gold robot jumped back and seemed to stare in shock at ADAX, who was picking himself off the ground. Seeing the other robot, the first thing that ADAX thought to do was to say: "Heh heh, sorry for droppin' in like that."

ADAX was just realizing how stupid what he said had sounded when the orange-gold robot jumped toward a panel on the wall. The short robot pressed a button on the panel: "This is Grand Marshal Yomex, we have an intruder on the ship! Check the area for any signs of cloaked vessels out there and look for any other intruders!"

The orange-gold robot turned to ADAX. "I'll deal with this one myself."

ADAX mentally kicked himself and muttered: "Aw, cripes…"

Author's Note: Well, that's all for now. I promise to try and update as soon as I can. Please review and thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter.


	17. Takedown

Author's Note: Thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter. Here's Chapter 17 where you'll finally get to see Yomex himself in action.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Takedown

**Inside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Yomex studied the green that stood before him. As the green robot took on a fighting stance and raised a weapon, the Grand Marshal swept his over him. Yomex skimmed his memory banks in a millionth of a second, comparing the green robot's design to all known Cluster designs, but no matches were to be found. However, when Yomex accessed non-Cluster designs he found a close match, Global Robotic Response Unit XJ-9. Comparing the green robot's design with XJ-9's, Yomex found several similarities although the green robot's design was considerably less sophisticated.

"So," Yomex began after he finished his scans, which lasted for about a second. "You're one of Wakeman's earlier creations. Now I know who to look for out there."

Yomex turned to the ship's intercom. "I have confirmed the intruder's nature. Tell the external search crews to look for human bio signatures."

"But, how'd you…" the green robot started, seemingly startled that Yomex appeared to know that Dr. Wakeman created him.

"How did I know?" Yomex smiled. "I can tell from your design. Although I have to admit that the files on the human, Wakeman, mentioned nothing about you."

"Yeah?" the green robot said. He seemed to shake away his earlier startled response and took on a confident smirk. "Then let give you my personal business card."

"The name's Dax!" the green robot yelled as he fired the weapon he held on full blast. But Yomex had anticipated that. The Grand Marshal dodged the blast with tremendous speed, gave a slight spin, then stopped and glanced coolly at the green robot.

"Dax, is it?" Yomex said mockingly. "Then I guess I must introduce myself. I am Grand Marshal Yomex. I'd make a longer introduction, but I'm in a slight hurry."

"A hurry, huh?" the green robot replied in an equally mocking manner. "Well, what're you gonna do about it, Shorty?"

Suddenly, Yomex's limbs started to extend. His arms and legs stretched several times as his neck also extended, though not as far as his arms and legs did. From each of his wrists activated a bright orange blade of energy. Yomex looked down at the green robot that had identified himself as ADAX, the confident smile of which had now disappeared. The Grand Marshal smiled ever so slightly and flared his now-extensive arms forward, baring his energy blades.

"Who's the 'Shorty' now?" he asked just before his energy-bladed arms shot forward.

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"Okay, left, now right, down that way then make a left." Brad directed Jenny while hanging on to her as she flew down the ship's corridors, blasting every unfortunate roach drone she came across. He shot a look over her shoulders and saw a raging purple robot chasing them down. Viruz's energy fields were now so hot and intense that the walls, floor, and ceiling literally wilted from the heat as he rushed. Brad gulped and pried his eyes away from the sight of the High Commander. He had to concentrate on directing. "Okay… um, left, no wait! The other left! Now down that elevator…"

Jenny followed Brad's directions just as he called them. Though, when Brad glanced at her, she seemed kinda frustrated every time he corrected himself when he accidentally said the wrong direction. Brad would've apologized for the screw-ups, but there wasn't really time for that now. Besides, it wasn't really his fault. Panic and stressful, dangerous situations weren't really much help in recalling things exactly.

"You can run, XJ-9," Viruz called out to them tauntingly. "But you cannot escape my wrath!"

"Brad, are you sure this is the right way?" Jenny asked in an urgent tone.

"Positive, Jenny." Brad said. "Have a little faith on the ol' Bradster."

"Well, the 'ol' Bradster' better have his directions straight." Jenny said. "Because if your directions are wrong we're going to be 100 different forms of toast."

The boy was about to reply when a ball of purple energy flew by, slightly singing his hair. Brad gave a small, muffled yelp of surprise as Jenny started to pull very tight and almost reckless evasive maneuvers in the narrow corridors. He held on to Jenny tighter and instinctively squeezed his eyes shut as they passed very, very close to the walls, floor, and ceiling. Another abbreviated scream involuntarily forced it's way up his throat as Jenny nicked the wall.

"Oh man…" Brad muttered. "This'd be so cool if only there weren't the threats of either being horribly mangled or brutally vaporized."

Brad forced his eyes open, and the first thing he saw was the floor rushing by only mere millimeters away. He quickly shut his eyes again, but then willed himself to open them again. He had to watch where they were going in order to give Jenny the directions, no matter how scary it was. Besides, hadn't he already done things today that would've made any of the so-called "tough" jocks back on Earth whimper like a puppy? The thought strengthened Brad's resolved and his eyes narrowed in the determination.

"Okay, Jenny," he said, keeping his voice as steady as possible. It was practically an unspoken code for guys to look like they were keeping calm, even though they were really scared pee-less. Besides, he wasn't Tuck. "Take a left, a right, then another left. After that just go down a couple of doors and we're there."

"Gotcha." Jenny said curtly as she blew down the corridors.

**Outside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Mrs. Wakeman looked for the umpteenth time at the Stealth Wasp's chronometer. Her mind repeatedly questioned her decision to send ADAX in alone. Sure, she had said that she was giving ADAX a chance to prove himself, but in retrospect a rescue mission into a ship full of hostile robots really wasn't a very good time to try and see if one of her creations had learned control. And ADAX past records were very far from exemplary.

Still, there was nothing she could do now. She couldn't go in and follow ADAX, the thermal vent's internal temperature would burn her to a crisp. She would just have to place her faith in ADAX, however foolish that decision seemed like. But as she finished that thought she was shown exactly how foolish the said decision was. Tow ant drones, a black one and a gray one, flew into view. Their weapons were bared and they seemed to be looking for something, and the doctor knew exactly what that was. Apparently, ADAX had been discovered and the Cluster commander within the ship had deduced that there was a cloaked ship that had carried ADAX in. Either that or ADAX had accidentally blabbed about it.

Dr. Wakeman took a deep breath to calm herself down. There was no reason to panic, the ant drones' sensor arrays weren't nearly powerful or sensitive enough to see right through her craft's cloaking field. Even the hole she had drilled into the Cluster ship's hull wasn't a cause for worry, the Stealth Wasp's cloaking field would just project an image of a whole hull. But just in case, she started to put on her space suit's gloves and helmet and started to observe the ant drones warily.

The ant drones slowly swept the bottom hull with their sensors. As they turned in a slow, almost lazy, manner Mr. Wakeman willed them not detect her presence. She had no such luck. When the drones swept by her position their eyes widened and then pointed their weapons at her. At that instant, Dr. Wakeman realized that they had scanned for her biological signature. That was the only way they could've detected her. She immediately threw herself at the craft's control panel. She managed to deactivate the cloaking field and activate her craft's shielding systems just as the two ant drones opened fire.

**Inside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

"Argh!" ADAX grunted as one of the orange-gold robot's energy blades sliced a long gash along the outer casing of the sensor pod on his left forearm. He rolled away and volleyed off three shots at full power, but the orange-gold robot—Grand Marshal Yomex, as he had called himself—merely dodged them all. The shots slammed into the ceiling and exploded violently.

"Hold still so I can kill you, dag nab it!" ADAX shouted in frustration, firing volley after volley of weapons fire from Miffy. None of which ever made contact with their intended target.

"Now why would I do something that?" Yomex mocked as he struck at ADAX with his energy blades with blinding speed, his extra long appendages moving in a manner that ADAX would've considered comical had it not been for the fact that each strike was deadly. The green robot did his best to avoid Yomex's strikes, but the Grand Marshal was just too fast.

ADAX saw a red sheen come over his vision as his frustration and desperation turned to anger. He let out an almost animal-like roar of rage as he waved Miffy around wildly, filling the corridor with destructive blasts of energy. Large chunks of the walls and ceiling exploded outward as the blasts struck them. But much to ADAX's chagrin, Yomex effortlessly dodged each and every one of his blasts.

"ARRGGHHH!!!" ADAX screamed in pain as Yomex's right arm energy blade slammed into the upper left portion of his chest. The cutting energy passed right through ADAX's back until Yomex's fist pounded into his chest, sending him into a wall. ADAX involuntarily dropped his weapon as he struggled against the energy blade that literally pinned. Everything suddenly seemed to become empty to ADAX. He also became aware that he now seemed to have tunnel vision. It took a moment for the green robot to realize that he didn't have tunnel vision at all, his perception had just seriously limited since the connection to his left arm—and the sensor pod located on said arm—was severed when the energy blade went right through the upper left side of his chest.

Yomex kept ADAX pinned with his right arm blade while he raised his free left hand. Yomex's now-long neck snaked down to bring the Grand Marshal's face on level with ADAX's face. "You fought well, Dax. Unfortunately for you, I fought better."

"Now, this ends." Yomex said simply, with no sign of gloating in his voice.

As Yomex slowly brought around his left hand to bring the energy blade right beside ADAX's face, ADAX desperately searched for a way to get out of the situation he was in. He quickly looked around and saw Miffy lying on the ground. It was beyond the arm reach of his default form, but well within the reach of his arms extension capabilities. Despite the pain he was feeling, ADAX smiled.

Yomex, upon seeing ADAX's smile, turned to look at what ADAX was looking at. ADAX's right arm suddenly extended the instant the Grand Marshal turned to look. ADAX's hand sprang forward and grabbed Miffy, but Yomex reacted quickly as well. Yomex brought his free arm blade down to slice off ADAX's quickly retracting arm. But even with Yomex's speed the only thing he cut off was ADAX's right thumb, the rest of ADAX's arm quickly resumed its original length with the gun in its grasp. The Grand Marshal brought his free arm-mounted energy blade to bear and whipped his head around to face ADAX and finish him off. But when Yomex turned he came face-to-face with ADAX's weapon.

"You know," ADAX said gleefully, seeing the shock spread through the Grand Marshal's face. "I don't think I've properly introduced you Miffy."

"Yomex, Miffy. Miffy, Yomex." ADAX said just as he pulled the trigger. The energy beam punched _into and through_ Yomex's face, blowing the Grand Marshal's head into shrapnel. Yomex's beam blades deactivated as his smoking, headless body fell lifelessly to the ground. No longer pinned to the wall, ADAX dropped Miffy and sank to his knees, clutching the hole in his upper torso.

As ADAX pulled his thumb-less right hand away from the hole, he saw that it was wet with formaldehyde. It was the formaldehyde from the tubing the covered his bio circuits and prevented them from to rotting. The formaldehyde quickly stopped spurting out as failsafe mechanisms constricted the severed portion of the tubing, preventing him from bleeding out what was practically his lifeblood. He stared at the hole for a moment before he reached over to pick up his weapon. It was difficult to do so this time since he was missing a thumb.

ADAX slowly stood up. His left arm hanging limp, accentuating the sorry state of his gashed and battered body. He gripped Miffy firmly as he started down the corridors. His mission wasn't complete yet, not by a long shot.

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Viruz stormed down the command ship's corridors, hurling energy balls at the blue robot in front of him. His target, XJ-9, dodged the ball of purple energy causing it to instead hit one of two mantis repair drones that had the bad luck to pass by at that very moment. Them other mantis bots looked in shock as its partner exploded. It cringed as XJ-9 flew by. It was just looking up to check if the coast was clear when Viruz flew right into it.

The mantis drone gave a wailing scream as the energy-covered body of the High Commander melted it out of existence. But Viruz hardly even noticed, the only thing he was concerned about was revenge. If anyone got destroyed by accident, well, tough luck for them. He continued on, leaving in his wake a trail of partially melted corridors. He didn't notice, all he saw and cared about was that Bradley and XJ-9 were running away from him. He had to capture them and destroy them. He had to get his vengeance.

Then, he saw XJ-9 suddenly duck into a room. Viruz tried to turn and follow her, but he was moving in such a fast and furious manner that he couldn't turn on a dime. He, instead, skidded into a very surprised red roach drone, melting the unfortunate robot into a puddle of molten metal before it could even scream. Angrily, the High Commander picked himself off the floor with his remaining left arm and went right into the room he had seen Jenny and Brad duck into.

When he stepped in he saw Jenny and Brad, literally up against a wall. 'The fools,' he thought. 'They've run themselves into a dead end. Now there is no escape for them.' He smiled a twisted, maniacal smile and started to laugh.

"There's no way out for you now!" Viruz said. His voice suddenly rose in volume. "I FINISH YOU HERE!!!"

Viruz threw himself bodily at the two teenagers, but before he could hit them they leapt out of the way. He rammed into the wall and melted right through. He started to turn back to leap right back through the hole he'd made when he realized that he was falling. A split second later, he realized something else: He wasn't just falling, he was falling down a waste disposal chute that led right down to a vaporization chamber. It was then that he knew why XJ-9 had led him down here. He had been tricked, and in his rage he fell for it.

With these realizations in mind Viruz fell down the chute, screaming in absolute fury the whole way…

Author's Note: Could this be the end of Viruz and Yomex? Could this story finally be over? Not just yet. There're still a couple of chapter's left, and maybe even an epilogue. Anyway, please review. I'll try to get the last chappies out as fast as I possibly can.


	18. It's Hard to Cure a Viruz

Author's Note: Thanks for all the reviews in the last chapter. Here's Chapter 18.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: It's Hard to Cure a Viruz

**Inside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

ADAX's left flailed limply as he ran down the Cluster ship's corridor. According to the schematics he downloaded, the control node for the thermal ventilation system was only around the corner. The green robot quickly turned around the corner, and promptly came face-to-face with a group of roach drones. The drones stared at him in surprise for a moment before they opened fire.

"It's the intruder!" one of the drones yelled as he fired. "Get him!"

ADAX dove to the floor, firing away with Miffy at the gaggle of drones. He quickly picked off the roach drones one-by-one, taunting and teasing them as he did. A few minutes later, the corridor was filled with nothing but the smoking pieces of the roach drones. ADAX grinned cockily as he stood up and dusted himself with his one good arm. He looked down at his handiwork and sneered.

"That the best you could do? Puh-leez, that was pathetic."

With that boast, the heavily damaged robot continued toward the thermal ventilation control node. He studied the control terminals for a moment, cross-referencing it with the schematics he had downloaded. When his mind confirmed that it was indeed the control node, ADAX raised his weapon and took aim. He fired a single, powerful blast into the control node's main terminal. Immediately, alarms wailed in the ship as the thermal ventilation system shut down.

"Ah," ADAX sighed appreciatively, taking in the loud blaring of the alarms. "Music to my ears."

With one last sweeping glance at the destruction he had wreaked, ADAX turned and continued down the corridors. As much as he had enjoyed blasting away at the drones, he still had to find the two he was supposed to rescue. He looked up the ship schematics again, looking for the brig. Once he had ascertained the brig's location, he clicked his metallic teeth and continued onward.

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Viruz desperately activated his thrusters, channeling all his energy toward them. But to his rage and dismay, it wasn't powerful enough to counter the pulling force of the waste disposal system. As much as he struggled against it, he was pulled downward by powerful tractor beams. The High Commander screamed in anger and frustration as he was unwillingly dragged to his doom by an invisible force that even he was powerless against.

Viruz involuntarily shut his eyes and shielded his face with his remaining arm as he entered the disintegration chamber. He shrieked in defiant anger, knowing that he was about to be destroyed but not accepting the fact. It was then that he noticed that he was feeling no destructive effects on his body. He heard a slight buzzing noise in his auditory sensors and slowly opened his eyes. What he saw confused and dumfounded him.

A bright aura of energy surrounding him as the disintegration beams fired away. But somehow they seemed to stop a few millimeters from actually hitting his body, sparing him from annihilation. Then, he realized what was happening. It was his energy field, it was deflecting the effect of the disintegration systems. At this realization, Viruz started to laugh maniacally. He wasn't doomed and he hadn't lost. He still had a chance to exact his revenge on XJ-9 and her young human companion.

With that thought in mind, Viruz's laugh became even more feral and maniacal. Had there been anyone observing, they would've seen the High Commander's body obscured from view as a powerful field of purple energy burst outward and destroyed the disintegration chamber. The mantis engineering drones that maintained the chamber were torn apart as the chamber itself was turned into molten shrapnel by the fierce explosion. The drones that were lucky enough, or rather _unlucky_ enough, to survive the blast ended up screaming in mortal agony as the heat emanating from the High Commander melted them out of existence.

Viruz merely smiled when he saw the mantis drones melt, imagining the same thing happening to XJ-9. He let out another deranged cackle before he strode quickly out of room. He would find XJ-9 and he would make sure that he had held face-to-face when he turned her into a pool of molten metal.

**Outside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Dr. Wakeman watched helplessly as the two ant drones circled her ship like vultures around. Even from the distance she could see the smiles on the ant drones' faces as they leisurely fired away at the Stealth Wasp. The power of the drones' weapons fire was nowhere near the power of the energy hurled at the Stealth Wasp by the alien armada it had come across earlier, but that very same encounter had ended up severely weakening the craft's shields. It fact, it was so weak that ever shot from the ant drones was bringing the shielding levels lower and lower.

Mrs. Wakeman glanced at the shielding readouts. On the screen was displayed: SHIELDING LEVEL – 48.57%. She grimaced, at that levels the shields would completely fail in a few minutes. She shut off the ship's artificial gravity and life support systems, rerouting power to the shields. She could do without the artificial gravity since they weren't really necessary. Also, she was wearing a space suit so the life support systems weren't needed either, at least not until Bradley came aboard. Or that is, _if_ he came aboard.

The doctor looked down at the monitoring system she had jerry-rigged onto the Stealth Wasp. It showed that both XJ-9 and ADAX were still operational, but she had no way of knowing if both of her creations had rendezvoused yet. She reached down to her direct radio communication system with ADAX.

"ADAX, do you read me?"

To Dr. Wakeman's relief, she heard a familiar voice answer in an annoyed tone. "What is it Wakeman? I'm kinda _busy_ here."

"Yes, I'm sure." She replied, hearing the sound of weapons fire in the background. "Have you rendezvoused with XJ-9."

"Does it sound like I've met up with her?!" ADAX said in a strained tone. Mrs. Wakeman heard a weapon shot and a surprised yelp followed by: "I'll get you fer that ya freakin' bug! Eat charged ions, Roach-boy!!!"

The scientist shook her head, not at all surprised. She knew that ADAX would inadvertently go head on with the ship's crew, no matter how ill advised that particular tactic was. She just hoped that ADAX would complete his objective soon. If not—she looked at the shielding readouts—they weren't getting away from here alive.

"Please make haste, ADAX." Dr. Wakeman said. "I'm afraid we haven't got that much time."

"Your tellin' me!" she heard ADAX reply. "And, dag nab it, it's Dax!"

**Inside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Brad cheered as Jenny fired volley after volley of destructive laser blasts at the roach drones that attempted to stop them. He heard alarms blare and was actually surprised that the klaxons had only sounded just then. With what he and Jenny had done over the last hour, one would think that it would've sounded long ago. Brad shook his head, that particular thought was pretty irrelevant. With Viruz out of the way, no one would be able to stop them from escaping even if the whole ship was alerted. Especially with the kind of power Jenny had at her disposal.

But then, Brad remembered that Yomex still hadn't made a personal attempt to stop Jenny. Sure, Yomex might have looked short and silly but no one would gain the rank of Grand Marshal for being totally useless. Right? The boy shook his head again. There was no sense in adding another thing worry about in the already expansive list of things to worry about in this particular situation he was in. Besides, Jenny should be able to handle anything that orange-gold shorty could dish out.

"All clear." Jenny said with a slightly smug look on her face. Strewn all over the floor were the blackened pieces of the roach drones.

"Dang," Brad remarked, snapping his fingers. "I wish I still had my ant drone body, I could've done some serious damage with it myself."

"Uh-huh," Jenny said doubtfully, rolling her eyes. "Right…"

Hearing Jenny's disbelieving tone, Brad replied: "It's true, Jen, I managed to whoop some major butt before Viruz stopped me. How do you think you ended up sprawled all over the floor?"

Jenny opened her mouth to make a snide remark, but then stopped. Come to think of it, she suddenly had a vague flash of herself fighting a giant green ant drone with a human head. Concentrating on that memory, Jenny saw that the head looked a lot like Brad. She turned to her best friend.

"It was you who smacked me into the wall?"

"Yeah," Brad said, not sounding as proud as he did before. "Uh… sorry 'bout, Jenny, I had no choice. Besides, you were still under that 'Queen Jennifer' program and you wouldn't believe me."

"Nah, it's okay, Brad." Jenny said, waving her hand dismissively. "Like you said, I was under that stupid queen program. Besides, I think it was that blow that got me back to normal. Well, what's normal for me anyway."

Jenny suddenly clenched her fists and took on an angry look. "If I ever get my hands on either Yomex of Fixit I'll make sure they get turned to scrap metal."

"I believe you have your chance of doing exactly that, XJ-9." A familiar voice said. Brad and Jenny turned, it was Fixit smiling pleasantly at both of them. "Well, XJ-9, did you not promise to turn me into scrap metal?"

Jenny quickly raised her arm lasers toward the blue mantis robot, preparing to fire at full blast. But suddenly, a blunt-tipped metal cable shot from one of the Chief Engineer's mantis arms and stuck to Jenny's chest. Before Jenny could react, an electric like tendril of energy rushed down the cable toward Jenny. The teenage robot gritted her teeth as the tendril struck her. Her body flailed while her arm-lasers involuntarily un-deployed as the tendril of energy ran through her body.

"Jenny!" Brad yelled in concern.

Finally, the tendril of energy stopped. Jenny stared at Fixit and smirked. "That's it? You'll have to do better than that!"

Jenny reached for the cable and attempted to yank it out, but it wouldn't give. Fixit just smiled as Jenny repeatedly tried to pull off the cable, all to no avail. Jenny scanned the cable and saw that a traction field clasped it onto her body. It was a strong field, but she should've been able to pull it out easily. Undaunted, she tried to deploy hand blades to cut the offending cable. But, somehow, the blades wouldn't deploy. She tried to deploy several similar weapons, but to her rising panic she found that she couldn't access them either. She then glared at Fixit, a realization dawning in her head.

"So, you finally figured it out." Fixit said with a slightly mocking quality to his voice. "That tendril of energy I used on you was a disabling charge. I set it to disable your offensive capabilities, namely, your strength and your weapons. Your strength has been reduced to human levels and your weapons have been completely disabled. How are you going to reduce me to scrap metal now?"

The cable suddenly retracted, dragging Jenny toward Fixit. As Jenny was pulled to only a meter in front of the Chief Engineer, Brad quickly looked around and grabbed a roach drone leg off the floor. He then charged at Fixit, baring the drone leg like a club.

"Let Jenny go!" Brad yelled as he swung the drone leg toward the mantis robot's face. The leg struck hard and shattered against Fixit's face. The Chief Engineer was unscathed, he just looked nonchalantly at Brad and slowly shook his head.

"Tisk, tisk, Bradley. That was very foolish. You are lucky I am not a combat unit or I might have been forced to hurt you." As Fixit said so his leg suddenly struck out, kicking Brad in the solar plexus. Brad went down, clutching his chest in pain. "Oops, looks like I _accidentally_ struck my leg out. Sorry, Bradley."

"Brad!" Jenny screamed.

"I'm okay, Jenny." Brad gasped out.

Jenny turned balefully toward Fixit and started to punch him repeatedly, but her weakened strength did nothing to Fixit. The Chief Engineer merely raised an eyebrow. "That is futile, XJ-9. Now, prepare for re-assimilation."

Jenny watched in horror as Fixit's free arm opened to reveal a mechanism holding a Cluster obedience chip. "It's not as complex as the earlier reprogramming I performed but judging from how that turned out this should be more effective, although your personality will not be preserved. Oh well, the Grand Marshal will just have to cope."

"The Grand Marshal's dead, I blew his head off." A voice suddenly said. Fixit, Jenny, and Brad turned to see a battered-looking green robot pointing a gun at Fixit. "And I f you don't drop her, you'll be dead too."

"Who the heck are you?" Fixit, Jenny, and Brad said together.

"The name's Dax," the green robot smirked. "Or if you wanna complete name, A-D-A-X which stands for Advanced Defender Android eXperimental. And before you ask what I'm doing here, let me just answer that for you. Wakeman sent me here to get her and that guy over there, and if you don't hand them over, Bug-butt, I'll strew your circuits all over this room. _Comprende_?"

"Another one of Wakeman's creations, interesting." Fixit said. Suddenly he turned and pointed the assimilation chip mechanism at ADAX. The chip launched and landed right on ADAX's forehead. Fixit smiled. "Too easy."

But to Fixit's surprise, the green robot did not take on the blank look that robots took on when the chip was applied to them. In fact, ADAX seemed to be in pain. He dropped his weapon and yanked out the control chip. "You know how much it _hurts_ when you try to override my programming?!!!"

ADAX flung the control chip with all his might right at the mantis robot. The chip slammed onto the Chief Engineer's face and tore into it like a bullet. Fixit fell to the floor, unmoving. But ADAX wasn't done. He picked up his weapon and started firing at the body of the mantis drone, yelling angry taunts. As he fired, Jenny picked up a roach drone arm that was deployed into a laser cannon. She grabbed the control circuits them pointed the roach drone arm at ADAX.

"Okay, you, drop it!" she said. The order seemed to stun ADAX, he looked at her in a confused manner and silently mouthed: _What?!_

"You heard me, drop it!"

"Jenny, what're you doing?" Brad protested. "He just helped us out and your pointing a gun at him. Besides, didn't he say that the Doc sent him."

"He might've said he was sent by my Mom, but how do we know he isn't from really Vexus?" Jenny said, eyes narrowed.

"What?! You gotta be kidding me!" ADAX exclaimed. "I get ordered around by Wakeman, fired at by an alien fleet, almost whooped by an orange-colored monkey bot, and attempted to be assimilated by an oversized praying mantis all while trying to rescue my sister and her boyfriend. And now, all I get for that is a gun pointed at me?! This is nuts!"

"Sister?!" Jenny said.

"Hey!" Brad protested. "I'm not her boyfriend. Well, I am a friend, and I am a boy. But it's not like that!"

"Whatever!" ADAX yelled in frustration. His chest plate opened. "Here, if you don't believe me, scan away."

Jenny kept the roach drone arm pointed at ADAX as she scanned the identification chip inside the green robot's chest plate. Finally, Jenny looked at ADAX and pointed the roach drone arm away. "The ID chip checks out, he was made by my Mom alright. Funny, she never told me I had a brother."

"Well, your Mom never told you had never told you that you had sisters either." Brad pointed out.

"Whoa, sisters? Just how many replacements did Wakeman make anyway?" ADAX asked. Then, he shook his head. "Never mind, let's just get outta—"

Before ADAX could finish, a wall suddenly exploded. Out of the hole in the wall came a figure glowing an intense purple. The fiercely glowing figure turned to the three and started to laugh maniacally. ADAX turned toward Brad and Jenny.

"Lemme guess, someone you know?"

Author's Note: Well. That's all for now. I'll try to get the next chapter out soon, though I don't know how soon since next week's Midterm Exam Week. Should be easy though, Psychology's course requirements this semester are pretty easy for me (IE, no more Math, I've completed all the Math-related requirements last sem). Anyway, please review.


	19. End Game

Author's Note: Phew! Midterms are finally over! Yay! Anyway, here's Chapter 19.

Disclaimer: Refer to the prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: End Game

**Cluster Imperial Palace, Cluster Prime**

Queen Vexus grimaced as the tactical screen in front of her throne showed that a quarter of Cluster Prime's planetary defensive ring went off-line. As it did, a large gap in the planetary force field appeared, exposing some of Cluster Prime's surface to orbital bombardment. However, the attacking rebel force had suffered catastrophic losses and thus could not take advantage of the shielding gap. The numbers were so reduced that the queen could count them with a split-second sweep of her optical sensors.

But she didn't smile since she knew that this wasn't the entire rebel force. Knowing the large amount of respect most of the Cluster military had for Yomex, the Grand Marshal could've easily mustered up more than twice the number of ships that had originally attacked. Still, there was the fact that the transmission from the Grand Marshal had been abruptly cut off, meaning that a problem had occurred with Yomex's communication systems. However, it might also mean that another large strike force was out there waiting for the signal that would surely come after the Grand Marshal's communications problem was remedied.

"Excuse m-me, Your Majesty," a trembling voice suddenly came over the intercom, it was the yellow roach drone in charge of the Imperial Strategic Center.

"_Yes_?" Vexus replied, making no effort to mask her annoyance.

"Um… well, Your H-highness," the drone's nervous voice sputtered over the intercom. "I, uh, that is to say we in the strategic center, er, thought that, um…"

"SPIT IT OUT!!!" the Cluster queen roared, losing patience with the drone's overly cautious manner.

"WefoundYomex'sship!" the drone said quickly, sounding as though he had expelled some oil.

"What?! Where is he?"

"His ship is orbiting a planetoid in the Gudani system. We detect no incoming or outgoing transmissions."

Vexus smiled thinly. She had found the traitor, and she was going to have him destroyed. She shot a look at the tactical screen. The last few attacking ships had already taken some serious damage, and soon they would be annihilated and would pose no threat to her. Her smile became wider.

"Have my flagship readied! It's time to for me to pay the Grand Marshal a little visit."

**Inside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Jenny and Brad felt a sense of dread while ADAX looked on warily as Viruz's maddened laughter filler the corridor. His energy field seemed to pulsate as it glowed, giving the High Commander the look of a bomb that was about to explode. And judging from the way everything within touching distance of the pruple robot was melting, it probably wasn't that bad an analogy.

"So, you think you destroyed me, eh?" Viruz mocked. "Well think again! I am not easily destroyed, but you, however, are not similarly endowed."

"Uh huh, yeah, right." ADAX remarked. "Jeez, what is it about bad guys and gloating?"

Viruz arched up a nonexistent eyebrow as he turned to look at ADAX. "What do we have here? Hm, judging from your design I can tell that you're another one of Wakeman's little experiments, albeit an old, battered one. Oh well, just one more target to obliterate!"

Viruz lunged, energy field flaring. The three jumped out of the way with ADAX and Jenny opening fire, ADAX with Miffy and Jenny with her commandeered roach drone arm-laser. As expected, the blasts were deflected by the High Commander's energy aura. Viruz turned and slashed his remaining arm at Brad. Brad yelped as he rolled away, but the hem of his shirt caught fire thanks to the heat emanating from the purple robot. The boy swatted at his shirt wildly, trying to put out the flames.

"You know," Jenny said through gritted teeth 1as she fired at Viruz. "I never managed to ask you how were supposed to get out of here."

"Wakeman's waitin' in a ship outside. We can get to it through the thermal vents." ADAX replied. "But we gotta hurry, I think she's under attack right now."

ADAX then pointed his weapon at the roof and fired a couple of shots. The blasts tore into the already heat-weakened ceiling, bringing it down on the High Commander. Viruz was just melting through the debris when the floor, also severely weakened by the heat he was giving out, caved in causing the glowing robot to fall and melt right through several levels. ADAX ran to the hole and fired a few wild shots into it, yelling in a feral manner as he did.

"That won't stop him for long." Brad said, the voice of experience.

"Yeah, well it'll slow 'im down." ADAX smirked. He then gestured to an open pipe inside the hole he had blasted on the roof. "Now come on, let's go."

Jenny nodded and tried to jump, forgetting for a moment that her enhanced systems were still disabled. As a result, she almost fell into the hole Viruz had melted into the floor, dropping the roach drone laser she was holding. ADAX managed to catch her by activating the magnets in his feet and magnetizing Jenny with his left foot. He brought his foot up and swung Jenny around and plopped her beside him.

"Uh, thanks." Jenny muttered.

"You're supposed to be my replacement?" the green robot said incredulously. "Jeez, your as weak as a human!"

"Hey!" Brad shouted.

"That's because I was hit with some kind of disabling charge by that mantis guy you took down." Jenny said. "Oh man, how am I supposed to get up there now?"

ADAX seemed to mull it over for a moment. Then, he grinned and got down to one knee, splaying his good arm forward. "Get a running start, I'll give you a boost."

Jenny was confused for a second, but then she nodded as she figured out what ADAX was planning. She walked back a few meters before she ran for ADAX. As her foot landed on her brother's weapon, ADAX flipped his hand toward the pipe. Jenny kicked off from the green robot's hand, using it as a springboard. She flew through the air then landed right inside the thermal vent pipe.

"Okay, dude, your turn." ADAX said, turning to Brad.

"Whoa, are you nuts?" the redhead said. "I can't make the jump."

ADAX just shrugged. "Jenny made it, you sayin' you can't?"

"Jenny's a super robot, she very likely had super advanced gears or something that gave her that kind of jumping power."

"I'm under-powered, remember?" Jenny pointed out. "That disabling charge gave me human-level strength, and I still made the jump. You can make it too."

"Um…" Brad looked at ADAX, then at the distance to the pipe, clearly unsure about whether to jump or not. However, ADAX was already getting impatient waiting for Brad to jump. The battered robot held his weapon in his teeth as he grabbed Brad with his one good arm. The boy was starting to protest when ADAX flung him toward the opening in the ceiling.

"Up you go, carrot head!"

"Jenny, catch!" ADAX yelled out. Jenny held out her arms as she caught Brad, but since she wasn't as string as her default settings she and Brad ended up in heap. Both of them sat up inside the pipe and glared sourly at ADAX.

Suddenly, bright purple pillars of energy exploded from the hole in the floor, blasting chunks from the ceiling that caused a section to collapse on ADAX. Jenny and Brad cried out in concern as the green robot was covered by a large amount of metal.

"Dax!"

Then, a thumb-less hand poked out of the pile of debris. ADAX crawled out of the heap, wincing in pain. From his abdomen poked out a large, jagged chunk of metal, and it was leaking formaldehyde. ADAX grabbed the metal piece that impaled him and pulled it out. He let out an involuntary scream of agony as he did so. He looked down, his formaldehyde kept on leaking. Somehow, the failsafe devices that kept them from gushing out had failed. At this rate, he'd lose all his formaldehyde in minutes. And soon after that his bio-circuits would shut down.

"Dax!" he heard Brad and Jenny say. Jenny continued: "You okay?"

ADAX didn't answer. He held up his hand into his mouth and quickly took out a disk that hung from a rack on his upper jaw. He turned to Jenny then threw the disk to her. "Catch!"

Jenny caught the disk then looked at ADAX questioningly. "What's this?"

"The schematics of this ship are on that thing." ADAX gasped out. "I've marked out where you can find Wakeman. Put it in your system and go."

"What about you?" Brad said.

"Did'ya see what just happened? Tall, purple, and angry is gonna be here any minute. I'll hold him back while you go."

"Are you crazy?!" Jenny said. "I couldn't beat Viruz with all my systems operational, and you're far from being in that condition! He'd tear you apart in a second!"

"No one's beaten me before and I don't intend to be beaten now." ADAX said, attempting to grin cockily, although what came out instead was a forced, pained smile. "Don't worry, I'll catch up."

"Oh no you don't!" Jenny shouted. "Don't give me that pseudo-macho, heroic crap! You can't stop him and you know it."

ADAX just kept on smiling. He casually bent over and picked up Miffy. Then, before Jenny and Brad could react, ADAX raised his gun and fired a few low-power blasts near the pipe where Brad and Jenny were. Jenny and Brad yelped and ducked in surprise.

"Go now, or I'll shoot you for real next time." ADAX said simply.

"You're bluffing!" Brad yelled. A split second later a blast singed his hair. "Yah! Okay, maybe not."

Then, a mass of intense purple energy came out of the hole in the floor. It gave out a scream of rage as it turned to face ADAX. The green robot faced Viruz calmly, he shot a look and the pipe and smiled when he saw Brad and Jenny go deeper into the pipe to avoid getting incinerated by the heat. A message scrolled before his eyes, confirming that Jenny was using the disk he had given her. Below the message appeared a map of the thermal vent that was superimposed over his vision. On it, he saw that Jenny and Brad were indeed making their way toward Wakeman's ship.

ADAX smiled. He held Miffy to his cheek tenderly and started to whisper: "Sorry, Miffy. You were good to me, but I need to do this."

With his pinky he flipped open a small panel on the bottom half of his weapon. Inside the panel was a button. He pressed it. Immediately, words began to scroll on the small LCD bar on Miffy's side.

EMP DETONATOR ACTIVATED

EMP DETONATION IN 5 MINUTES

ADAX looked at the map superimposed on his vision. His sister and her friend were still moving, they would be out of range of the powerful electro-magnetic pulse detonation before his weapon detonated. Which was good because the pulse detonation would shut down every unprotected machine within its blast radius. He didn't know if his bio-circuits could survive the EMP, but then it didn't matter anyway since he was already leaking away the very substance that kept his bio-circuits from rotting away.

"So, you decided to attempt to hold me back while your sister and her human companion escape. How noble." Viruz sneered. "Noble but foolish. I will destroy you and afterwards I'll destroy them. Nothing will stop me!"

'That's what you think.' ADAX thought silently. The timer on Miffy's LCD bar showed: 4:37.1. ADAX smiled, 4 minutes and 37.1 seconds. Soon it would all be over. Sure, he'd never get to experience freedom again, but this would sure as heck show Wakeman that he wasn't no failure. He grinned cockily at the High Commander. "Yeah? Well bring it on, Purple-boy!"

**Outside Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Dr. Wakeman looked at the displays nervously. The shielding strength was already dangerously low. She had to do something about the two ant drones that were attacking her vessel, but what? She knew that the ant drones had self-repair capabilities that made the weapons she had brought with her useless against them. She knew that they had their ludicrously exposed off switches, but they were too far away so that negated them as a factor. To be rid of them she would have to find a way to totally disintegrate the ant drones' bodies. But none of her weapons were capable of…

'OF COURSE!!!' her mind suddenly screamed out at her. 'The Molecular Cohesion Disruptor!"

Mrs. Wakeman leapt behind the piloting area. She dug through the pile of weapons she had stacked behind her chair until she finally found what she had been looking for. She pulled out a large, cumbersome-looking energy weapon. It was the Molecular Cohesion Disruptor she had been developing for integration into XJ-9's systems. As it's name suggested, one blast of it disrupted the cohesion between molecules on anything its beam hits. The molecules would literally come apart at the seams, causing the object that had been fired upon to disintegrate into free atoms.

The scientist opened the ship's cockpit and pointed the MCD at one of the ant drones, a gray one. She checked the charge meter on the MCD, only enough for four shots so she had to make every shot count. She carefully tracked the ant drone with the MCD and pulled the trigger. A blue beam lanced out from the weapon and struck the gray ant drone right in the chest.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. But as Dr. Wakeman watched on she saw that the ant drone seemed to fade more and more until, finally, it disappeared. The doctor allowed herself a slight smile, at least she knew the MCD worked. She then started to look for the other ant drone. Seeing what had happened to its companion, it was now flying wildly and erratically, firing even more as it did.

Alarms blared silently in the vacuum of space announcing the imminent failure of the shields. Mrs. Wakeman struggled to aim the weapon as the ant drone flew around the Stealth Wasp in evasive patterns. She fired, but the black ant drone managed to dodge it. She fired again with the same result. Realizing that she was down to one shot, she concentrated hard on the ant drone's flight pattern. At first, it seemed erratic, but then she started to see a pattern.

If she was right then she should fire her weapon right… _there!_ She pulled the trigger. The beam punched right through space, and the ant drone flew into it. As it faded to nonexistence it glared hatefully at the space-suited scientist just before it disappeared. Dr. Wakeman let out a sigh of relief as she closed the cockpit and sank to the chair. She flipped on the life support back again. XJ-9 and Bradley would be here soon and the later would need the air. Besides, the suit was getting stuffy. She took off the helmet and flung it away.

But just as she thought it was all over, the threat receiver started to blink rapidly. She slowly looked up and saw the large menacing form of a Cluster Imperial Flagship…

Author's Note: I hope that was okay. I was kinda rushing it a bit.


	20. Get Us Out of Here!

Author's Note: Well, here it is, Chapter 20.

Disclaimer: Refer to prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Chapter Title: Get Us Out of Here!

**Cluster Imperial Flagship**

Vexus peered out the port as her gigantic, beetle-shaped flagship bore down on the boxy, diminutive command ship of Grand Marshal. The command ship was merely a twentieth of the size of her flagship, anyone looking at the scene would have concluded that the command ship stood no chance. But the queen knew better, she had followed Yomex's military history with interest and she knew that the Grand Marshal's craft was more than it appeared. One of Yomex's greatest victories had been taking out an enemy warship 8 times the size of his command ship, plus the warships escorts. The Cluster ruler had no doubt that Yomex could seriously damage her craft.

"Hail them." Vexus said curtly to a roach drone on a communications console.

"At once, my Queen." Answered the roach drone. The red drone started tapping a few keys, but after a few moments he turned back. "We cannot open a channel, Your Highness. Either he shut down his communications or there's a problem with the communications system of his command ship."

"I expected as much." Vexus mumbled, pursing her lips thoughtfully. "Have they shown any sign of detecting us?"

"It's strange, Your Majesty, but they don't seem to have detected us. Their shields are down and their weapons systems are inactive."

Queen Vexus nodded. Here it was, the perfect opportunity to destroy a traitor in one fell swoop. With the command ship in its current state, destroying it would be easy. In fact, it was _too easy_, far too easy. Vexus narrowed her eyes warily. Yomex was up to something, she was sure. This was some sort of elaborate set up. Well she wasn't going to fall for it.

"Keep your distance," she warned. "Shields and weapons to full power, have them on standby. Something's not right here…"

The Cluster Imperial Flagship kept a wary distance from the command ship, its shields and weapons ready with sensors peeled for any nasty surprises. Anticipating some sort of surprise move from an enemy they didn't know was _dead_.

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

ADAX's left arm flailed limply as he dodged energy ball after energy ball from High Commander Viruz. He couldn't fire back since Miffy was charging up. Besides, this wasn't gonna last long anyway. He took a look at Miffy's timer, 2 minutes, 52.1 seconds. Yup, not much longer. He put his weapon and hand over the hole in his stomach, trying to slow the bleeding of his formaldehyde.

He ran down the corridors, leading the purple robot on a wild chase. He only had to hold out for little longer than two more minutes. After that, his mission would be completed. He would succeed. He wouldn't be a failure. It was just too bad that he most likely wouldn't be able to gloat to Wakeman about how he had proven her wrong. Oh well, at least he prove himself.

"What's the matter, ugly, too fast for ya?" ADAX taunted, further enraging Viruz.

The High Commander chased after him as fast as he could. The intensity of his energy field was actually slowing him down since his feet literally melted to the floor with every step, it made it as if he was sloughing through thick mud. ADAX saw that end just smiled crookedly. He took another look at his weapon's timer. 1:24.6

Finally, the corridors came to a room. The schematics he downloaded told him that this was the engine room. He looked around and saw security and engineering drones. They were all slinking toward him with weapons drawn when Viruz literally plowed into the engine room. Seeing the insanely glowing purple robot, the drones immediately for got about ADAX and started running for their lives. Apparently, they had heard about the High Commanders current temperament.

The green robot turned to face the Cluster High Commander and childishly stuck his tongue out to provoke him. The purple robot screamed in pure fury. He produced a massive ball of energy then hurled it at ADAX, but in his rage he wasn't aiming well enough. ADAX ducked, but he didn't need too. The shot passed by well away from where he was, side swept a reactor cylinder, the exploded into a wall.

[Warning, reactor containment unit damaged] A mechanical voice droned out as alarms started to blare. [Total containment failure imminent]

But neither Viruz nor ADAX was listening. The former was too caught up trying to destroy the latter, while the latter was concentrating on evading the former. Viruz shot out his remaining arm, attempting to claw at the green robot. But ADAX jumped out of the way, causing the High Commander to instead claw into a wall and send globules of molten metal flying. The purple robot whipped his head around in rage, turning to look at his target.

ADAX just taunted him again. Viruz tore on, clawing and flinging energy balls as he went after ADAX. ADAX, in the meantime, was starting to feel lightheaded. His formaldehyde fluid was almost fully drained and his bio-circuits were stating to feel the effects. He started feeling woozy and his vision blurred. He shook his head and forced himself to focus.

'Just a little more.' He mentally pleaded to himself.

'You got it, buddy.' A voice in his mind answered. He shook his head again, this time in disbelief. This close to what was most likely his end and he was still talkin' to himself.

Then, he came to a dead end corner. He turned around and saw Viruz, smiling like a lion closing in for a kill. ADAX looked at Miffy's timer: 0:5.0

He smiled and looked at Viruz. "Too late, dude."

ADAX felt Miffy explode in his hand. He just managed to see Viruz's shocked look a split second before everything went dark. The EMP field expanded to a radius of 15 meters, completely shutting down any unshielded piece of electronics within its range, including hapless roach and mantis drones. As ADAX, Viruz, and the drones clattered lifelessly to the ground the alarms and warning messages kept on blaring.

[Warning, reactor containment unit damaged, total failure imminent. Warning, reactor containment unit damaged, total failure imminent…]

**Cluster Stealth Wasp**

Dr. Wakeman studied the Cluster Imperial Flagship as she got over her initial panic. It was clearly Vexus' ship, but it wasn't acting the way the doctor expected it too. It seemed almost wary of the command ship. Though the scientist reasoned out that it must be because they had been discovered--ADAX had guaranteed that—and they didn't want XJ-9 to escape. She shook her head, she'd have to deal with that problem later. First, she had to get XJ-9, ADAX, and Bradley with her.

She shot a look at the jerry-rigged tracking monitor and was pleasantly surprised to see XJ-9's signal edging closer towards her, and the internal diagnostic system reported that XJ-9 was under no form of control or reprogramming. But then she frowned, where was ADAX's signal? She looked around and managed to see ADAX's signal go out somewhere onside the commandship's engine room. Quickly, she reached for her radio link and keyed in XJ9's frequency.

"XJ-9! XJ-9!" she called out urgently.

"Mom!" a familiar, excited-sounding voice answered back. There was no visual link since XJ-9's primary communications monitor had been destroyer before she had been kidnapped. "You don't know how glad I am to hear you voice!"

"Yes, I'm glad to know that you're all right as well." Mrs. Wakeman responded in a rushed manner. "However, I need to ask, did you rendezvous with ADAX?"

"You mean Dax? Yeah we did, but…" Jenny's voice suddenly became unsure with a slightly guilty tone. "But we left him behind, he said he'd hold off the guy who was comin' after us."

"I know that," the doctor answered. "I've been keeping track of your signal. I hailed you because I've lost ADAX's signal—"

"What?!" Jenny demanded, interrupting her mother.

"I've lost his signal somewhere in the engine room—"

"I'm going to get him." Jenny declared without waiting for Dr. Wakeman to finish. The scientist then heard her daughter say to someone, presumably Brad: "Just go forward for about 30 feet then turn left, it should be right there. I have to go get ADAX."

Brad must've answered because Mrs. Wakeman then heard: "I don't care if I'm not up to full power, I gotta get him. I may not know him that much, but he's still my brother."

"Wait, what was that about not being up to full powe—" Dr. wakeman started to say, but again she wasn't able to finish. This time, because Jenny cut off her radio link.

**Grand Marshal Yomex's Command Ship**

Jenny looked up the location of the engine room from the copy of the schematics ADAX had given her. She felt a few of her systems becoming accessible again as she slid out of gap in the thermal vent. Apparently, Fixit's disabling charge was wearing. She concentrated on her pigtail jets, willing them activate. At first, her pigtails only quivered and didn't activate, but when she tried again they suddenly came to life.

Jenny didn't linger around to celebrate. She had to hurry. As if in agreement to her thoughts, a warning message kept repeating it self: [Warning, reactor containment unit damaged, total containment failure imminent]

She flew down the corridors quickly, knocking down every drone that came in her way. She knew that a containment failure in the reactor meant that it could explode anytime soon. She had to get to ADAX before that happened. As she flew onward, she saw several signs that Viruz had left in his wake. There were melted corridors and drones and several scoring marks from energy balls that had missed their mark. But as she neared the engine room she saw seemingly untouched drone bodies lying on the floor, unmoving. It was an ominous sign.

Finally, she came inside the engine room. It didn't take her long to find ADAX and Viruz, both lay unmoving on the floor. It was then that she realized what had happened, ADAX must've detonated some sort of EMP device. It was the only explanation for all the seemingly untouched robotic bodies splayed lifelessly in close proximity to the engine room.

She scanned ADAX's body. Hoping to detect something, but knowing that she would most likely detect nothing. To her surprise, she detected traces of biological matter and faint cerebral activity. It took her a moment to realize that the bio signal was not a form of contamination but actually ADAX's control circuits. 'A bio-brained robot? Man, I never Mom would ever try something like that,' she thought to herself.

She shook that thought away. Somehow the fact that ADAX's brain was of biological nature had saved him from the effect of the EMP, but judging from the pool of spilled formaldehyde on the floor Jenny knew ADAX was in a critical situation. She hoisted her brother up then activated her radio link with her Mom.

"Mom, is Brad with you?"

"Yes," came the reply. "He's here. I see that you're in the engine room. Have you found ADAX? Is he—"

"Yeah, I found ADAX. I'm getting some brain activity, but he's leaked out a lot of formaldehyde."

"Formaldehyde?! You must get him here as quickly as you can. I need to work as soon as possible of ADAX will lose all neurological function!"

"I know that!" Jenny said irritatedly. "Look, this ship's about to go boom, so just go okay? I'll blow my way out of here and meet up with you."

Jenny didn't wait for her mother's reply. She activated the arm cannon on her free arm and started blasting her way out of the ship as she carried ADAX in her other arm. A few walls later, she was out of the ship. She swept her sensors around and found a Stealth Wasp heading right for her. Initially, she thought she was being attacked. She was about to turn and fire when her scanners revealed that the Steath Wasps occupants were two humans, namely her Mom and Brad. She flew toward the ship and managed to grab hold of it. A moment later, it disappeared into a wormhole.

**Cluster Imperial Flagship**

"Your Highness, we have detected a wormhole jump just after we detected two objects launching away from the command ship." A red roach drone.

Two launches and a wormhole jump? Escape craft? Vexus asked the questions in her mind. Yomex's wasn't one to abandon his ship without a fight. So what did those mean… Suddenly, it hit her. The only logical reason she came u with was that Yomex was self-destructing his craft. And with the kind of reactor the Grand Marshal's ship had the explosion would be…

"Get us out of here!" Vexus suddenly screamed. "NOW!!!"

The drones scrambled to obey her order. The Imperial Flagship turned around and managed to enter a wormhole just as the blackness of space was lit up by a large, powerful detonation.

CONCLUDED IN EPILOGUE


	21. Epilogue

Author's Note: Well, here it is, the end of my fic. Thank you so much to all the reviewers who ever left a review in each chapter. They're really appreciated.

Disclaimer: Refer to prologue

Story Title: Corrupted Programming

Epilogue

**Wakeman residence, Tremorton**

ADVANCED DEFENDER ANDROID, EXPRIMENTAL VERSION 2.0

STATUS: LOADING…

LOADING COMPLETED

STATUS: BOOTING UP…

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" a slightly nervous-sounding voice said, suddenly assaulting ADAX's auditory sensors.

"I told you, Tuck, Dax saved me and Jenny. Here's perfectly alright." Another, vaguely familiar voice said.

"But didn't Mrs. Wakeman say that she locked up this guy because he was just a teeny bit crazy?" the first voice said. "What if he goes nuts right after the Doc turns him on?"

"He won't, Tuck. He's my brother, remember?" A third voice said, this one seemed young and feminine. "And any relative of mine can't be that bad, right."

"Oh yeah?" the first voice challenged. "How about you sisters, hm? Remember whae happened when you turned them on?"

"Put your mind at ease, Tucker," a fourth voice said, this one also had a feminine quality to it but seemed older. "I've removed that aggressiveness subroutine that integrated itself to ADAX's original mind. There is little chance that he'll 'go crazy' now."

"But there's still a chance! I don't wanna take that chance!"

Suddenly, ADAX recognized the voices as his memory fully booted up. Well, at least three of them. They were Wakeman, Jenny, and Brad. The fouth voice, well, he didn't recognize that. His eyes flew open. He looked around and saw Wakeman, Jenny, and Brad looking down at him, they were smiling. He slowly sat up and saw a little boy looking at him with suspicion from behind one of Brad's legs. From the conversation he had heard he deduced that this was Tuck, the source of the fourth voice.

"Hey, Dax," Jenny greeted. "Glad to see you awake again."

"Huh?" ADAX said, confused. "Where… when… what…"

For a moment, ADAX was perplexed about his situation. But then, it all came back. Wakeman reactivating him, arguing with and irritating Wakeman, blowing up fighters from an alien armada, sneaking into a ship, fighting Yomex, fighting a robot whiched glowed purple, activating the EMP detonator in Miffy…

"Hey, wait a minute…" ADAX said. "I activated the EMP detonator, I'm supposed to have had my head fried."

"You did activate your EMP detonator," Dr. Wakeman confirmed. "But the biological nature of your brain kept your programming intact. Though, from the extent of the damage you received, we almost lost you."

"Damage?" ADAX mumbled. He recalled the beating he had received from Yomex and the metal chunk that had impaled him. Involuntarily, his hands clutched his abdomen as he looked down. He was pleasantly surprised.

"What the… This ain't my body!" ADAX blurted out. "At least, not my old body. And something also feels different. I fell like I'm, I dunno, thinkin' faster. Like I also have a new brain along with the new body."

"Well, that's pretty much true. Your old body and bio-circuits took a heck of a lot of damage." Jenny answered. "Mom built you a new body and transferred your core programming to a new cybernetic brain. She also removed that aggressiveness thing and that duality factor in your programming. Meaning that you won't go 'Hulk' and you won't have conversations with yourself."

ADAX was staggered. "Whoa, a new body a new brain. I mean, dang, I feel like I've been born again or somethin'."

"In a way, you were. Although your resistance to program tampering and EMP are now gone along with the bio-circuits," Mrs. Wakeman said. "To make up for that, though, your new body now has all the abilities I built into XJ-9. They would be most useful indeed since you'll be helping XJ-9 in her global defense duties."

"Looks like you got yourself a sidekick, Jen." Brad said jokingly.

ADAX flinched at Brad's remark. "Hey, hold up, I ain't gonna be no one's sidekick. Partner, maybe, but not a sidekick. Got it? Not. A. Side. Kick. I don't sidekick."

"How 'bout crazy? Do you do crazy?" Tuck said. "Wait, of course you do. Crazy!"

"Y'know kid," ADAX smirked. "I'd be insulted if that weren't true. But it is, so I'll take it as a complement."

"Ahem," Dr. Wakeman coughed, getting everyone's attention. "I've also added a little something extra, ADAX, since I know you like handheld weapons. Reach over to your back with both hands."

ADAX did as he was told. He reached over with both hands. A compartment opened in his back and ADAX pulled out not one, but two weapons that looked like the bottom half and upper of Miffy split apart into two different guns. ADAX literally screamed with joy.

"Oh gawd, it's Miffy's daughters!" he shouted. "I'm a Daddy! I'm a Daddy!"

"Yup," Tuck muttered as the others looked on strangely at ADAX. "He's crazy, alright."

ADAX then went over to a full-length mirror. In the mirror he saw robot that seemed to be a newer, sleeker version of his old self. It looked a lot like his old body, but it was less stocky and lopsided. Also, his eyes weren't bugged out and the sensor pod on his left arm was absent. He continued to look at the differences in the mirror until Jenny and Brad started to laugh.

"Jeez, ADAX, don't stay in front of the mirror to look." Brad said. "You're starting to act like a girl."

ADAX reluctantly turned away. But from the distant look in his eyes, they could tell that he was performing internal diagnostics, clearly exploring the new gadgets Mrs. Wakeman had installed in him.

"Look, Dax," Jenny said. "Me, Brad, and Tuck are goin' to hang out in the mall. Wanna come?"

"The mall? Sure, why not?" ADAX said after thinking it over. "Maybe if I'm lucky someone will hold up a store and I could really try out my new systems."

"Remember, ADAX," the doctor reminded. "Self-control. I don't want to have to seal you in a pod again."

"Sure, self-control, gotcha." ADAX said, clearly only half-listening. "And it's Dax, darn it, Dax!"

"Well, lets go." Brad said. He, Tuck, and Jenny turned to exit the lab. Brad looked over his shoulder. "You commin', Dax?"

"Huh?" ADAX said. "Uh yeah, but first I gotta do something."

Brad shrugged and exited. Jenny and Tuck followed him. As they left, ADAX turned to his creator. "Hey, Wakeman, uh, well, you know, thanks for givin' me the chance and fixin' me up and all that."

"Hm, are you actually thanking me for something, ADAX?" the doctor smiled.

"Well, yeah," ADAX said. "But don't expect me to do it often. I'm just feelin' generous today."

Mrs. Wakeman rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm sure."

"Look, I goin' with Jenny and Brad. So see ya later, okay?"

"Very well, I hope you'll enjoy 'hanging out'. But please stay out of trouble."

"Yeah, yeah, I will. Don't worry 'bout it." ADAX said waving his hand dismissively. He walked to the door and exited the lab. But as the door closed, he said softly: "Thanks, Mom."

Author's Note: Well, it's finished. Sorry if the last three chapters seemed rushed, but I did them all in one sitting. Anyway, thanks again for reading and reviewing.


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